Tag: Tilda Swinton

Middlesex Hospital Blues

Middlesex Hospital Blues

Curators – Iain Forsyth, Jane Pollard – 2026 – UK

****

A chapel interior is repurposed as a reinvention of Derek Jarman’s final film Blue – exhibition / installation at Fitzrovia Chapel from Friday, October 16th to Wednesday, November 18th

Pollard and Forsythe’s third and final installation / exhibition at the Fitzrovia Chapel is a deceptively simple setup.

With the space opening from mid-morning to midday to five or six pm depending on day of the week, most visitors will be entering the building from daylight – although, as the evenings creep in, towards the end of the day, and losing an extra hour of daylight in the evening after the clocks go back an hour on Sunday, October 25th, some visitors may be entering from fading light or even darkness.

Entering from daylight as this visitor did, one is immediately struck by the lighting.

In a reimagining of the late director Derek Jarman’s final film Blue (1993), the interior is lit in that colour, which has the effect of locking the architectural interior into a sort of perpetual twilight, and not one in which the light goes slowly from light to dark but which seems more or less fixed. … Read the rest

Tags ‘caught in the web of capital’, 1987, AIDS, armour, artwork, Arup, blue, Byzantine, chapel interior, church interior, collective care, contemplative space, death, Derek Jarman, dying, empathy, exhibition, experimental, final film, final journey, Fitzrovia, Fitzrovia Chapel, font, gay man, hospital, hospital uniforms, Iain Forsyth, installation, International Klein Blue, Jane Pollard, knight, LGBTQ, light sculpture, light show, lighting, London NHS teaching hospitals, loudspeaker system, medieval dignitary, meditative space, mercy, Middlesex AIDS unit, Middlesex Hospital, Middlesex Hospital Blues, minimalist, music, numinous, paint hue, personal tragedy, Princess Diana’s dress, Raj Patel, reflectIion, reflection, repurpose, sculpture, Simon Fisher Turner, sound field, The Spirit of the World, Tilda Swinton, tomb, transcendence, twilight, two-way mirror, upright couples embracing, Verbal texts, vocal collective, Yves Klein

Movies Documentary Features Live Action Music

Broken English

Directors – Iain Forsyth, Jane Pollard – 2025 – UK – Cert. 15 – 96m

*****

Musician and cultural icon Marianne Faithfull is interviewed at length, and her life and artistic achievements examined from several angles – compelling documentary is out in UK and Ireland cinemas on Friday, March 20th

Who is Marianne Faithfull? Given that, sadly, she died during the making of this documentary about her, we should ask another question. Who was Marianne Faithfull?

Marianne appears extensively here as a real life, a 78-year-old interviewed by actor George MacKay (from The Beast, Bertrand Bonello, 2023; Femme, Sam H. Freeman, Ng Choon Ping, 2023; 1917, Sam Mendes, 2019) for The Ministry of Not Forgetting, an institution created specially for this film narrative where it is run by Tilda Swinton (from Memoria, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2021; Snowpiercer, Bong Joon Ho, 2013; Orlando, Sally Potter, 1992) in a suit and tie who delivers all manner of fascinating pronouncements about Marianne’s life and work, and at one point even explores that territory by choreographing a dancer’s movements.

While The Ministry of Not Forgetting provides a structure within which Faithfull’s humanity and legacy can be explored, this latest film from Forsyth and Pollard (20, 000 Days on Earth, 2014; The Extraordinary Miss Flower, 2024) is characteristically kaleidoscopic.… Read the rest

Tags 1960s, Allen Ginsberg, Andrew Loog Oldham, art, beat poet, Bob Dylan, brand, bright young thing, category, celebrity, choreography, cultural icon, culture, dance, dancer, documentary, drugs, drugs raid, epitaph, final years, friend, fur rug, George MacKay, girlfriend, Hal Willner, home, Iain Forsyth, interview, Jane Pollard, Keith Richards, life, manager, Marianne Faithfull, media, memory, mentor, Mick Jagger, Ministry, miscarriage, misogyny, music business, musician, news, Nick Cave, Not Forgetting, paparazzi, photographer, pigeonhole, poetry, police, pop culture, punk, Punk Rock, recording session, Redlands, rehab, rehearsal, relationships, Rolling Stones, sex, Sister Morphine, song lyrics, stage, suit and tie, Sussex, Thurston Moore, Tilda Swinton, Warren Ellis

Movies Animation Documentary Features Live Action

A Sudden Glimpse
to Deeper Things

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date October 18 2024
No Comments on A Sudden Glimpse
to Deeper Things

A Sudden Glimpse to Deeper Things

Director – Mark Cousins – 2024 – UK – Cert. PG – 88m

*****

A look at Scots artist and painter Wilhelmina Barns-Graham, who had synaesthesia – out on UK UK dual-format Blu-ray / DVD from Wednesday, October 21st

I am someone who frequents art galleries, yet I have to confess that before seeing this film, I had never heard of Wilhelmina Barns-Graham. Cousins starts his film off assuming we know nothing about her.

He starts with images. Who is this old woman on a verandah with palm trees in the background? Or peering down at rocky ground wearing an all-weather coat?

In later years, she frequently wore a necklace she had made resembling, in Cousins’ words, Concorde with droplets.

Wilhelmina Barns-Graham, a woman to whom all men were attracted (“she’d have flirted with you”, a woman who knew her tells Marc) was fascinated by order and disorder. Her arresting 1967 abstract painting Pilgrimage consists of Vermillion squares on brown, jostling as if in a procession across the picture surface.

Her father (and here Cousins cuts in the moving image of Joseph Cotten giving his “if you rip the sides off houses you’ll find swine” speech from Shadow of a Doubt, Alfred Hitchcock, 1943) never wanted her to be an artist.… Read the rest

Art Exhibitions Movies Documentary Features Live Action

Exhibition on Screen
John Singer Sargent
Fashion & Swagger

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date April 15 2024
No Comments on Exhibition on Screen
John Singer Sargent
Fashion & Swagger

Exhibition on Screen:

John Singer Sargent – Fashion & Swagger

Director – David Bickerstaff – 2024 – UK – Cert. U – 93m

****

Late nineteenth century society portrait painter John Singer Sargent was fascinated more by their clothing and the possibilities of paint than he was by the women he painted – documentary is out in UK cinemas for selected screenings from Tuesday, April 16th

Based on the exhibition first at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA) and now at Tate Britain, this opens with incidental music that conjures a contemporary dance floor, a soundtrack which provokes a strange tension with paintings hanging on walls and costumes displayed in glass cases as the camera moves through the physical spaces in which they are displayed. But then, the title suggests this might be a little different from Exhibition on Screen’s usual fare.

John Singer Sargent’s A Portrait of Miss Elsie Palmer (A Lady In White), 1889-90, shows the energy and intensity of his portraiture. The brushstrokes are arresting and like nothing else being done at the time. The paintings might be perfect, but the people within them most definitely are not: Sargent captures their imperfections in a most compelling way.… Read the rest

Tags 1882, A Lady In White, actors on a stage, Alice Brisbane, Alice Comyns Carr, Alice In Wonderland, Aline de Rothschild, art student, artist, beetle wing dress, Boston, Boston Public Library, brushstroke, camp, Carmen Dauset Moreno, Carmencita, Carnation Lily Lily Rose, Carolus-Duran, cataloguer, Chelsea, chemical dyes, Chinese lanterns, city, colour, costume designer, costumes, dance floor, dancer, dancers, dark space, David Bickerstaff, David Rocksavage, diet Coke, drama, dress straps, Edward Darley Boit, Ellen Terry, Elsie Palmer, Erica E. Hirschler, Europe, exhibition, Exhibition On Screen, fabric, fashion, fire, flamenco El Jaleo, Florence, Frances Fowle, Franz Hals, Gassed, Give Women the Vote, glass cases, Grand Manner portraiture, grandmother, green white and violet, Grenada, guitar players, GWV, Helena Bonham Carter, Henry James, Houghton Hall, Imperial War Museum, James Hayes, John Singer Sargent, Joshua Reynolds, Kate Moss, Kenwood, Lady Macbeth, Lady Sassoon, light, Lisa Stansfield, London, Louise Cooling, Madame Pierre Gautreau, Madame X, Madrid, Mark C. O’Flaherty, Mary Frances Grant, MFA, Miss Haversham, MoMA, Monet, Monty Python, Mrs Hugh Hammersley, Mrs. Charles Thursby, murals, muscles, Museum of Fine Arts, Mustard Gas, neck, New York, Norfolk, nouveau riche, nude, off the shoulder, opera cloak, Oscar Wilde, outer space, paint, painting imperfection, Paris, Paul Fisher, photographer, plain air, portraiture, pose, powerful, Queen of Hearts, queer, queer artist, queer circle, Richard Ormond, Rose Rocksavage, Sandy Powell, Siouxsie Sioux, sitting, society women, Stephanie L. Herdrich, Stephen Farthing, studio, Sybil Sassoon, Tate Britain, texture, the Lyceum, Thomas Edison, Thomas Gainsborough, Tilda Swinton, Tim Walker, Tite Street, torsion, twist, UK, Velázquez, Virginie Amélie Avegno, W. Graham Robertson, watercolour, Whistler, William Blake, women’s suffrage

Movies Animation Features

Guillermo del Toro’s
Pinocchio

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date December 9 2022
No Comments on Guillermo del Toro’s
Pinocchio

Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio

Directors – Guillermo del Toro, Mark Gustafson – 2022 – US – Cert. PG – 114m

*****

Created as a puppet by a bereaved, religious woodcarver father, a little wooden boy must make his way in a world of ruthless show business, Fascism and war – stop-frame puppet movie is out on Netflix on Friday, December 9th

Co-helmed by Will Vinton alumnus Gustafson, del Toro’s Carlo Collodi adaptation sees him return to the theme of the Catholic Church collaborating with Fascism that he previously explored in Pan’s Labyrinth (2006). The story roughly follows the familiar template of Disney’s Pinocchio (1940), even down to punctuating the action with songs, but with the loosely defined place and time of a fairytale shifted to a very specific Italy before (briefly) and during World War II, with Pleasure Island replaced by a boys’ military training camp. The emphasis has shifted, too, from the notion of the narrator cricket character as conscience to coming to terms with mortality, although the idea that just because things appear to be fun they may not necessarily be good is knocking around in there too.

A narrator who will later identify himself as Sebastian J.… Read the rest

Tags accent, action, adaptation, afterlife, anteroom, assistant, bad contract, bereavement, blue fairy, blue wood sprite, bring to life, Burn Gorman, Burn!, burning, Carlo Collodi, Cate Blanchett, Catholic, Catholic Church, Catholicism, child, Christoph Waltz, church, churchgoer, conscience, contract, cricket, crucified, David Bradley, death, drunk, drunk parent, earnings, Ewan McGregor, fairytale, fascism, fathers and sons, feet, Finn Wolfhard, fish, Frank Passingham, fun, goodness, Gregory Mann, Guillermo del Toro, home, island camp, Italy, James Bond, Jesus Christ, Jim Henson’s Creature Shop, local church, maltreat, Mark Gustafson, miniature, miniature sets, model, model animation, monkey, monster, mortality, musical, narrator, nose, one night releasing the last of their bomb, parent, planes, politician, politics, priest, puppet, puppet animation, puppetry, religion, right and wrong, Ron Perlman, school, sea, Second World War, showman, sky, snake tail, soldier, songs, statue, stop-frame, stop-frame animation, stop-motion, stop-motion animation, Tilda Swinton, torso, training, travelling, tree, US, war, Will Vinton, wonder, wood, wood sprite, woodcarver, World War 2, World War II, World War Two, WW2

Movies Features Live Action

Memoria

Memoria

Director – Apichatpong Weerasethakul – 2021 – UK, Colombia, Thailand – Cert. 12 – 126m

****1/2

A British woman travelling around Bogotá, Colombia, is troubled by a strange banging sound and goes on a quest to investigate it – out in cinemas on Friday, January 14th

This is a film to approach with caution: I confess to never having previously got on with a Weerasethakul film; perhaps I’ll go back and revisit some after this. His work – or at least his feature films – have been described as Slow Cinema (of which, more shortly).

This is light years away from Hollywood cinema with its determination to grab your attention and hold it by throwing stuff at you at frequent intervals. The director is Thai, however his films don’t seem to sit alongside any Thai movies or wider Oriental movies I’ve seen. Even locating it in art house cinema, it doesn’t really look like anything else. I am reminded of what has been said about the French director Jean-Luc Godard: if cinema hadn’t existed, he would have invented it. Although his movies are nothing like Godard’s, the same could be said of Weerasethakul’s movies.

Actually, the feature films are only the tip of the iceberg: he makes far more short films than he he does features, an output that immediately puts him at odds with the feature film-oriented world of theatrical cinema distribution.… Read the rest