Tag: Anthony Baxter

Eye of the Storm

Posted on by victorfraga

James Morrison (1932-2020) was one of Scotland’s most accomplished landscape painters. The British Royal family own several Morrison paintings, as does J. K. Rowling. Documentary filmmaker Anthony Baxter (You’ve Been Trumped, 2011) followed Morrison for two years as the artist battled fading eyesight while aiming to create one final landscape painting. This led to the creation of Eye of the Storm, in which Morrison serves as the narrator and central figure as the documentary chronicles his artistic journey from his college days in Glasgow to his final solo exhibition, From Angus to the Arctic (January 2020) at the Scottish Art Gallery, Edinburgh.

While watching a film on a renowned painter, it is inevitable to draw comparisons with films of the past, on famous painters. They include Pirosmani (1969) by Giorgi Shengelaia on Georgian primitivist painter Niko Pirosmani and the 2010 film Nainsukh by Amit Dutta on the eponymous 18th-century Indian miniature painter. Unlike Pirosmani – which focused on the artist’s tragic personal life – Eye of the Storm traces Morrison’s career and interlinks his significant works to various events in the painter’s life. In that sense, Baxter’s film is more similar to Nainsukh.

It becomes somewhat mandatory for a film dealing with painting as its subject to be aesthetically accomplished and Eye of the Storm doesn’t disappoint. The film’s aerial photographer Graham Black captures some breathtaking visuals of Scotland’s lush farmlands, meadows, majestic mountains near the coast of the North Sea, and the ice-cold beauty of the Arctic region. Baxter, who also dons the role of editor and cinematographer employs wide-angle shots to replicate the vast landscape and skies portrayed in Morrison’s paintings. He intelligently uses the music of Dominic Glynn and Karine Polwart’s songs to accentuate the beauty of the Angus landscape and also to heighten the emotional quotient of the film during key moments.

Some of the past incidents of Morrison’s life have been recreated through animation done by Catriona Black, who takes us through her process in the film. I was reminded of Amit Dutta’s films which bring alive miniature paintings using animation done by his wife Ayswarya Sankaranarayanan. Catriona Black’s work during the sequences in the Arctic of Greenland stands out from the rest. Baxter also intersperses archival footage of old BBC films that had documented Morrison’s life in Montrose during the ’70s. The other aesthetic highlight of Eye of the Storm is the periodic insertion of intertitles on a black background displaying inspiring quotes from some of the greatest painters.

Born in Glasgow, Morrison started his career after graduating from Glasgow School of Art in 1954, by painting tenements and the city landscape. Even back then, he never included a single human in his paintings. In 1960, he moved to the fishing village of Catterline on Scotland’s east coast. There he painted some impressive seascapes and wooden fishing boats in the stormy ocean waves. Morrison moved with his wife Dorothy to Montrose in 1965, where he joined the Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art to teach painting for the next 22 years.

An old clip of Morrison in Montrose shows him talking reverentially about his friend and painter Joan Eardley who died of cancer at the age of 42. Of the various anecdotes shared by Morrison in the film, he speaks very fondly of his trips to the Sennelier Art Shop in Paris from where he used to purchase all his paintbrushes and colours. He gets emotional while showing his 2006 landscape painting A Lady Remembered, which he refers to as a portrait of grief since it was created after his wife’s death.

The film also has scenes of Morrison’s son John, who is an art historian, talk about the influence of pre-Impressionism era European painters on his father. Morrison’s writer and broadcaster friend Dennis Rice narrates the impact of Morrison’s paintings on him as they altered the way he saw and felt the world! Morrison was one of the few artists who has painted the untouched lands of the high Arctic regions. He jokes that he might be the only painter to have held an exhibition in the Arctic. Eye of the Storm ends with the Scottish Art Gallery presenting Morrison’s 25th solo exhibition and the legendary painter gracing the venue with his presence, accompanied by his son and daughter. Six months later on 31st August 2020, James “Jim” Morrison breathed his last but his legacy lives on!

Eye of the Storm is in virtual cinemas from Friday, March 5th.

Flint: Who Can You Trust?

Posted on by victorfraga

The water crisis in Flint, Michigan is one the worst government debacles in recent memory, yet it is something of a footnote in US political discourse, especially to British observers. For 50 years, the people of Flint received their water supply from Lake Huron, one of the five Great Lakes. On April 25th 2014, however, the state government switched the water source to the Flint River, saving five million dollars for the city budget.

It was a moment that defied the most basic common sense. After all, the river has been a dumping ground for over 100 years, full of detritus that kills the fauna that drinks from it. Illness swept the city, as did rashes and bald patches following baths and showers. Soon, citizens resorted to bottled water for sustenance and baby wipes for hygiene. The problem was caused by the water’s corrosive properties, which tore layers from Flint’s lead pipes and poisoned thousands of people with neurotoxins.

The river is no longer used, yet the debacle continues – lead remains high in many Flint residents’ water, an outbreak of Legionnaires’ disease has been linked to the crisis, and just one government official has been convicted. Most disturbingly, the effect of lead poisoning on a whole generation of Flint’s children is yet to be understood. This catastrophe is symptomatic of the city’s deep-rooted woes. Like nearby Detroit, Flint was once a very wealthy city, buoyed by the strength of General Motors. This changed drastically when GM closed plants in the 1980s, sending Flint into a protracted depression.

There is some dramatic licence, namely the ominous strings that compliment scenes of the grey, dilapidated city, yet Baxter’s film is more interested in the people of Flint rather than any kind of a cinematic yarn. Also, he appears only for several interviews and recruits Alec Baldwin as narrator. Baxter’s main role is that of camera operator, and he does so with a hands-on intimacy, following locals’ efforts to lobby the government, spread awareness, and help the community. Indeed, Baxter was very much a part of their effort, setting up camp in a nearby hotel so that he could document the unfolding political narrative.

The second half of the documentary sees a clash between Prof Marc Edwards of Virginia Tech University and Scott Smith, a ‘citizen scientist’ allied with actor Mark Ruffalo and his misguided Water Defense project. Edwards, the real scientist of the pair, is proven right as Smith eventually lays his pseudoscience bare – another American charlatan in the age of ‘alternative facts’. There is some narrative baggage outside of this feud. For example, scenes of Alec Baldwin meeting locals do nothing to advance the film’s investigation, amounting to little more than a bit of star power. It’s wrapped up rather suddenly, too, but that is to be expected in a documentary covering an ongoing event. In any case, Baxter has done a great service to the people of Flint, highlighting that without checks, balances and demands for accountability, the most basic tenets of developed societies can crumble.

Flint: Who Can You Trust is available to watch on BBC iPlayer from Wednesday, December 2nd.

You’ve Been Trumped Too

Posted on by victorfraga

Anthony Baxter’s first film, You’ve Been Trumped (2011), was so potent that it should have been an unofficial public service announcement during the 2016 presidential election. Its depiction of the Aberdeenshire golf club fiasco, which saw several residents – including 92-year-old Molly Forbes – have their water supply cut off, revealed Trump for what he is: a bully, a narcissist and a quasi-gangster.

Naturally, the most damning stuff occurred when the cameras merely rolled; no argument was needed, just let the man speak. One moment sees Trump off-handedly demand the destruction of a house overlooking the course, and when his colleague suggests this will be met with opposition he retorts, with that signature bitchy arrogance, “Who cares? You know what, who cares?’” Alas, much has happened in Donald Trump’s life since then, and this new film, You’ve Been Trumped Too, picks up where it left off.

An early interview segment between Baxter and Trump shows that he manages to be disagreeable before he’s even asked a question. Trump objects to his microphone clip, the ‘worst clip he’s ever seen’, and demands that Don Jr. to show Baxter what a real clip looks like, beckoning his son with a pointed finger.

Don’t feel sorry for Don Jr., though, because he’s truly a chip off the old block. In another early segment, Trump’s firstborn insists with total sincerity that the ‘little people’ were heard and at ‘great expense’, displaying an almost risible lack of self-awareness.

Again, Baxter does not have to probe far to capture Trump and his offspring’s dearth of personal qualities. Yet he does orchestrate several set ups to cast the thickest possible shadow over the creepy dynasty. For example, one scene that focuses on Molly Forbes’s WW2 farm service appears to be a digression, but it’s used to contrast against the Trump sons’ penchant for shooting elephants, reminding us of even further layers of villainy.

The contrasts continue. We see Molly attend a sombre church service remembering the sacrifices of the World Wars, which is followed by a Trump rally in which he ogles some naval guns and declares, “Oh, and we love the second amendment, right?” One is hard-pressed to argue with the hostility of Baxter’s portrayal, but these contrast segments and indeed the wider documentary preach to the choir; most are all too familiar with Trump’s empty, boastful rhetoric and his immature disregard for human life.

The documentary does draw a few parallels between Trump’s promises for the club and his promises for the country – such as the 6000 hotel jobs that turned out to be just 95 – but Baxter builds little upon the original story otherwise. Then there’s a travel segment that follows local man Michael Forbes to the Republican National Convention in Ohio. Perfectly watchable, but it’s also filler in a film that really shouldn’t have any at just 75 minutes long.

Ultimately, despite its virtue, this documentary is something of a You’ve Been Trumped 1.5 – an encore rather than a sequel. So for those unfamiliar with Trump’s mission to level the sand dunes of Balmedie, as well as Scottish Parliament’s spineless appeasement of him, I urge you to see Baxter’s incendiary debut feature, You’ve Been Trumped.

You’ve Been Trumped Too is available on VoD Tuesday, August 18th.