The Facility (2012)

Image: Fetch Publicity

Seven volunteers sign up to a drug trial: for two weeks in an isolated medical facility taking an experimental drug known as Pro9, they will each receive £2000. As you might expect, things do not go according to plan and after but a few hours there is much fretting, sweating, screaming and bloodshed.

While the premise might appear old hat, The Facility is nonetheless a solidly enjoyable low-budget shocker. Hospitals are always a good setting for horror films (think Halloween II, Cold Prey II, Lars Von Trier’s The Kingdom), and writer-director Ian Clark successfully draws out the chilling potential of the empty wards and long, dark corridors. Director of Photography Stuart Bentley deserves mention too for the tight camerawork, the invasive gaze playing on the the niggling paranoia and claustrophobia of the characters.

Credit is also due to the very game cast, which comprises both spirited up-and-comers and steady old hands. Among the unlucky human guinea pigs we have wide-eyed young postgrad Adam, played by Aneurin Barnard (Citadel), cocky estate agent Jed (Casualty’s Oliver Coleman) and drug-trial vets Joni (The Descent’s Alex Reid) and Morty (Steve Evets, who I last saw in the superb Looking for Eric). Everybody gives a committed and interesting performance and, beyond perhaps a couple of slight missteps, they handle the mounting histrionics well. The naturalistic dialogue feels improvised at times, which only adds to the tense atmosphere.

On the downside, I can’t understand why Ian Clark would choose to frame the story with the sort of captions that one would expect on a found footage film. Indeed, some of the pre-publicity seemed to suggest that this might be in the found footage genre, which is misleading. While Clark does make use of CCTV cameras, the entirety of the film is not done this way, and I was thankful for this. Found footage can be interesting, but in this case I feel that resorting to budget-saving found footage devices would have made the film look less accomplished. 

There are a couple of moments which stray a little too far into familiar territory, with one scene using both the ‘taking photos to illuminate a dark room’ and ‘dropped camera creating a strobe effect over an attack scene’ tropes, which felt out of place. The running time is also on the short side – while the film is definitely effective, a bit more build-up and time with the characters would not have gone amiss.

An interesting aspect of the film is that it functions as a neat comment on the state of the jobs market today, but does not labour its point. In a few subtle exchanges, especially as career lab-rats encounter desperate students, Clark draws a disturbing picture of how far people will go to earn money. ‘Bit young to be doing this, aren’t you?’ asks a journalist, on the study for a story, of a 19-year-old girl. ‘Dunno, haven’t got anything else to do’ she replies. This sort of commentary is prime horror currency at the moment, coming after American Mary similarly highlighted the ways in which money-making is becoming an ever riskier business.

Taut and short, The Facility is an impressive debut feature which makes a virtue of its location and is blessed with a strong cast. It sounds clichéd, but writer-director Ian Clark is most definitely one to watch.

3.5/5 

MP

Spartacus: Blood and Sand

In preparation for the release of the final season of Spartacus, War of the Damned, on DVD later this month, I will be working my way through the entire show, season by season.

Image: Fohnjang Ghebdinga/Fohnhouse

Overview

Spartacus: Blood and Sand is a strange brew of Rome, 300 and FHM, a sword-and-sandals epic for the lad-mag generation where gratuitous sex and violence meet cod-Shakespearean dialogue and togas. While many of us are familiar with the revolutionary leader Spartacus would become (think Kirk Douglas and all those people standing up), this season attempts to fill in some of his back story. We see the unnamed Thracian warrior forging an alliance with the Romans, led by the nasty Legatus Claudius Glaber, to defend his village, only to turn against them as they abandon his fellows to pursue their own ends. Captured, the warrior is sentenced to death by armed combat but manages to best his would-be executioners. Spotting an opportunity for career progression, gladiator-owner Quintus Lentulus Batiatus purchases him for his ludus, bestowing upon him the name of Spartacus. What follows sees ‘Spartacus’ trying to earn freedom for himself and his wife by undertasking training, becoming in the process both people’s favourite ‘the champion of Capua’ and an important figure in all sorts of political machinations across all levels of society.

This series comes from the Raimi-Donen-Tapert production house, and two of those names were responsible for Xena: Warrior Princess. With Xena herself, Lucy Lawless, in the cast, thoughts of this previous show were never far from my mind.

Weaknesses

You get the impression that the showrunners were hoping for outrage from conservative viewers, and certainly take full advantage of the openness of cable television to nudity and gore, but the violence is so cartoony and the sex so harmless that, for the most part, the spectacle merely bores. The look of the show is successful to varying degrees; while the interiors and sets are solid enough, the BBC documentary-style special effects recreations of the arena and city leave much to be desired. In terms of direction, the opening episode is jam-packed with ‘floating-leaf’ moments, overwrought televisual shorthand for emotional depth or artistic flourish that probably look good on paper but almost never translate to the screen without being inadvertently comedic. This is fortunately reined in with later episodes, but there are still occasional attempts at visual poetry which fail either due to their sheer incongruity or the lack of budget. The frequent use of naff green screen special effects and slo-mo fight sequences (the usual jaw crunches, blood splatters and heads flying) also grate. On a slightly churlish note, the main characters do seem rather too kempt for ancient Italy.

One of the main problems with the show is the wildly varying tone. While some of the cast seem to realise that the low budget and excessive sex and violence mean it all comes across as somewhat camp, and pitch their performances accordingly, others approach it as though it were deadly serious. This odd mix, together with the vast range of accents (who knew there were so many Antipodeans in Italy back then?!) occasionally make it feel like a late-night equivalent of one of those Australian children’s programmes that CBBC was full of in the mid-nineties. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but I doubt it was the intention of Steven S. DeKnight when he created the show.

Strengths

The undoubted highlights of the show are John Hannah and Lucy Lawless as power-hungry ludus owner Batiatus and his wife Lucretia. Both get their characters spot on from the off, playful yet menacing and with a nice line in meaningful scowls. Lawless also does well when paired with Viva Bianca as spoilt rich girl Ilythia, wife of Glaber and a nasty piece of work. Their bitchy one-upmanship lights up the screen. The titular Thracian himself, model-turned-actor Andy Whitfield, is certainly charismatic and brings a certain amount of gravitas to the role. Sadly Whitfield was diagnosed with cancer after this season and was unable to return to the series before his untimely death at the age of 39, so we won’t know what else he could have done with the character. Other cast members who give particularly worthy performances are Jai Courtney as Varro, a character so nice that you know he can’t be long for this world, and Nick E. Tarabay as Ashur, one of those brilliantly oleaginous characters you just love to hate.

In fairness, later episodes do use the sex and violence to better effect, as the writers seem to realise that both only work as useful narrative tools in the correct context: a bout of sex between unwitting enemies and a heartbreaking duel between friends show how effective they can be when done right.

Verdict

Spartacus: Blood and Sand gets to live, but only just. It starts poorly, but if you manage to work past the early episodes it develops into an oddly addictive watch. By the time the season reaches its conclusion, in a very satisfying bloodbath, you will definitely want to know what happens next, with a final speech from our hero promising that the true fight has only just begun…

2.5/5

MP

The Lords of Salem (2012)

Image: Anchor Bay

I have had a rocky relationship with Rob Zombie’s horror films. From excellent word of mouth I was sure that I would enjoy House of 1000 Corpses, but I ended up really disliking it. I found it soulless and messy, only rescued by some good acting. The sequel The Devil’s Rejects I liked more but, while it smoothed out some of the roughness of the first film, it still left rather too bitter a taste. Again, though, acting was mostly exemplary. Then came his divisive Halloween remake, which I loved, against my prejudices. The love affair was short lived, however, as the version released on DVD, apparently the director’s cut, was full of the sort of pointless graphic excess which had been mercifully absent in the cinema version. Finally came Halloween II, which I was not alone in regarding as far too oddball a film, spinning off from the established formula into a strange world of Zombie’s own. While innovation should be applauded, the jump just didn’t work for me. As usual, though, the acting was strong, with Malcolm McDowell and Brad Dourif especially giving a pair of tours de force.

Now Zombie has returned with The Lords of Salem, an homage to the occult cinema of the 70s and 80s. His wife and muse Sheri Moon Zombie plays the central role of Heidi, a Salem DJ and recovering junkie who receives a personally addressed LP from ‘the Lords’. The playing of said LP draws Heidi into a living nightmare in which she seems fated to end up an integral player in the machinations of a coven, led by the spirit of long dead witch Margaret Morgan, looking to end the heathen reign of the Church and bring back Lucifer, taking their revenge on the people of Salem in the process.

If one thing can be said of Zombie, it’s that he has a unique style. While it might not always agree with me, there is a certain frisson that is unmistakeably his. That being said, this is certainly his most referential work. The City of the Dead-style opening sets the tone for the witchy business of the film, far closer to Bava’s Mask of Satan than to any straight effort like The Crucible. The crumbling apartment building where Heidi lives is an amalgam of the buildings from Suspiria, The Shining and Tobe Hooper’s remake of The Toolbox Murders, with some very familiar camera angles on creepy corridors. The overall plot is a Rosemary’s Baby sort of affair, with flashes of other Satanic favourites in there as well. Zombie certainly knows and loves these films and the tributes are reflective of this.

Overall, however, this is far looser an effort than Zombie’s Halloween (still my favourite of his films by some distance). The reheated plot is left to bubble along with no real effort made to spice it up until the conclusion, but then the sudden inrush of trippy rock video imagery strikes an incongruous note against the pleasantly sedate style of the first half. Before the halfway mark is definitely the strongest part of the film, with a nice slow-burn tension – I was reminded favourably in parts of Ti West’s masterly House of the Devil – but this build-up is unfortunately not paid off in the finale. It's a shame about this damaging tonal misstep, because Zombie does conjure up some strikingly idiosyncratic images, especially the burnt-faced people who appear in a variety of bizarre and sacrilegious outfits, most memorably in papal regalia surrounded by an entourage of goat-headed nudes.

As I have come to expect from Zombie’s work, the cast is where the film’s true strengths lie and this one is all about the women. Sheri Moon Zombie gives a nicely measured performance which is thankfully far closer to her excellence in Halloween than her oddness in Halloween II. Her creepy landlady Lacy is played by the marvellous Judy Geeson, who for me will forever be the star of trashy exploitation flick Inseminoid, even though she’s done a large number of more mainstream films as well. Lacy’s equally worrying sisters are played by The Rocky Horror Picture Show’s Patricia Quinn, as terrifically vampy as you would hope, and ET star Dee Wallace (Stone), finally allowed to play nasty and relishing the task. Meg Foster gives a solid pantomime performance as Margaret Morgan, though it’s a shame she didn’t get more screen time. The men are sidelined but Bruce Davison and Jeff Daniel Philips do make an impression as the nice guys.

Far from being Zombie’s worst film, The Lords of Salem still remains something of a mixed bag. While the first half promises much, the conclusion sadly goes for quirky spectacle over anything truly affecting. A trashy revisiting of familiar horror territory, the cast and the occasional creepy flourish make this one to try and catch, but not unmissable.

3/5

MP

Au Bonheur des Ogres (The Scapegoat) French Trailer

A veritable modern classic in France, Daniel Pennac's quirky comedy thriller (the first of his Malaussène Saga of books recounting the exploits of professional scapegoat Benjamin Malaussène and his huge family of half-siblings and adopted waifs and strays) is relatively unknown in the English-speaking world. Hopefully this will change with the release of Nicolas Bary's film adaptation, which should benefit from the presence of Bérénice Bejo, still a shining light internationally thanks to the success of The Artist.

Sadly, despite what it says on the trailer, the film has been delayed until October 2013, so we will have to wait until then to see whether Benjamin Malaussène will find success on the big screen. The English-language release date for the film remains TBC.

MP

Traduction Francophile (par FG)

Un vrai classique moderne en France, la comédie thriller excentrique de Daniel Pennac (le premier de sa Saga Malaussène qui raconte l'histoire du bouc émissaire professionnel Benjamin Malaussène) est relativement inconnu dans le monde Anglophone. J'espère que ça va changer avec la sortie de l'adaptation cinématographique de Nicolas Bary, qui devrait bénéficier de la présence de Bérénice Bejo, toujours un fer de lance grâce au succès international de The Artist.

Malheureusement, malgré ce qu'il dit dans la bande-annonce, le film a été retardé jusqu'à Octobre 2013. On devra donc attendre jusque-là pour voir si Benjamin Malaussène va trouver le succès sur le grand écran. La date de sortie pour le film en anglais reste à confirmer.

The Iceman UK Trailer

Feast your eyes on the new UK trailer and poster for Ariel Vromen's explosive thriller The Iceman. Based on the true story of serial killer Richard Kuklinski, The Iceman is one of the best movies Fohnhouse has seen so far this year. It hits our appropriately cold shores on the 7th of June.

Image: Lionsgate

FG

The Bay (2012)

Image: Entertainment One

I've had my eye on this film ever since I saw the trailer, which seemed to promise a mix of Jaws and Outbreak (both big favourites of mine), differentiated from other films in the same veins through the use of the now very familiar found footage framing device. Now that I've seen the film, I can say that it delivered both less and more than what I was expecting.

The closest formal antecedent which sprung to mind while watching The Bay was Carlo Ledesma’s 2011 Australian horror picture The Tunnel, a found footage horror that was also an early crowd-funding success. That I was reminded of The Tunnel was a good thing – it’s a very taut film which does wonders with atmospheric locations and a low budget – but The Bay does not entirely share its merits. Both films are narrated accounts of horrific events, told through survivor testimony and footage of the events themselves. However, where The Tunnel still maintained an atmosphere of dread through its slow drip feeding of information, The Bay goes for broke in the opening minutes and never makes an effort to hide what is going on. Indeed, my biggest criticism of the film is the lack of tension, with so many separate stories that fail to come together. Some of them are memorable and suitably creepy, such as the desperately documenting doctor and his fruitless exchanges with the CDC, and a couple of teenagers who get more than they bargained for when they swim in an innocuous-looking creek, but other stories fall flat, with a young girl’s FaceTime chats to her friend being a particularly grating low point.

On the plus side, the nature of the horror is satisfyingly icky, and sure to cause a few nightmares. I won’t spoil your viewing pleasure here by saying exactly what is in the water, but there are plenty of body-horror moments that will leave gore fans very happy indeed and non-gore fans grabbing for the nearest bucket. Something else worthy of praise is the ecological angle – the terrible fate of the town is down to pollution of the water supply, something which has been covered up or ignored by The People Upstairs. That the film itself purports to be an illegal revelation of sources gathered by a WikiLeaks-esque site (in a reference that already feels a bit passé, sadly) adds another nice level of social critique. I do question director Barry Levinson’s decision not to present the story in a rather sleeker manner than he does – moments that could be quite exquisitely horrific are muted by the necessarily low quality footage – but the film is certainly more than competently made and this sort of message-horror has been sadly absent in recent years (whatever happened to The Host II?).

Easy jump scares are well married with some genuinely upsetting moments (the quick flashes of both a high street and a hospital full of corpses are notably affecting), and the anti-pollution message is welcome. It might be a tad rough in places, but The Bay is still a thoroughly watchable horror effort with one or two images that will stick with you. Happy swimming!  

MP

An Interview with Enzo Cilenti

Image: Martin Parsons/Fohnhouse

You might not recognise the name, but the chances are you will have seen Enzo Cilenti in something. For the past fifteen years he has appeared in an impressive range of television shows and films, from The Bill and Heartbeat to Next and The Rum Diary. He is currently starring in Prisoners' Wives on BBC1 and later in the year will be on the big screen in the highly anticipated Kick Ass 2. An alumnus of the University of Nottingham, from which he holds a degree in French and Hispanic Studies, he returned to talk about his career and the novel he has co-authored, Mediterranean Homesick Blues. As I also hold a language degree from Nottingham, I leapt at the chance to talk with him.

So how does one go from studying languages to being a successful actor?

Well, because of the year abroad I grew up really quickly in a way that I just don’t think you don’t get to do with other courses. You have a lot of navel-gazing, in a good and a bad way, during that year, and I started to think it was something I might want to do. Then, when I returned for my final year, all my friends had graduated and I’d go and visit my mates for the weekend. On Monday morning I’d be woken up really early to the sound of electric shavers going and I’d see them running out the door putting cufflinks in and I thought ‘No…’. The reaction to it was sort of vomit inducing – ‘that’s your life for the next forty or fifty years…’.

I’d always had a huge interest in film. I decided to join the New Theatre [Nottingham’s student-run theatre]. It was just so much fun, and I came into contact with people who were very serious about doing drama as a career, and they were applying to drama school. It seemed really logical to me. The dirty secret of being a professional actor is that you’re just playing, really. I couldn’t imagine a more fun way of spending my time. I’d sort of lost interest in my course as well. I loved translation…there’s the link – ultimately when you get a script you are interpreting and translating a writer’s work. All the language work, all the phonetics we did, the register stuff, the socio-linguistics…those are the building blocks of what you study as a modern languages student and what I do on a good day.

You play Bob in Armando Iannucci’s In the Loop, the spin-off from the television series The Thick of It. Were you a fan of the show before you were cast in the role?

I was, but not massively enough to be a committed fan because at that time I was living in the United States. This was a good thing, because had I been that much of a fan of it I would have been bricking myself for the audition, but I actually wasn’t. I should have been because, when it was announced, anyone with any sense of decency and good taste wanted to be in that movie!

Given that the plot is all about ego clashes, how was it acting that out?

It’s interesting because I did all my stuff with the Americans. I think I was in the same room, with the camera turning, as Peter Capaldi on one day out of three or four weeks. You kind of get that with any project, cliques form. It’s actually quite good. That being said, all the regular cast members were delightful; just the loveliest people. They were excited to be making a movie of it, the people who weren’t regulars were excited to be part of this amazing show. It was one of the nicest things I’ve done in terms of harmony…

Crucially, for all filmy nerds out there, the way it was improvised was very important. I hate improvising, it’s really hard. Usually it’s an excuse for not having a tight script. But Armando does it in a very structured way that’s actually very liberating. We would shoot two or three takes as per script, verbatim, and then as many takes as we had time for making stuff up.

The Thick of It is over now but In the Loop has spun off into Veep. If you were asked to reprise the character would you be up for it?

Oh God, are you kidding me, yeah! [Julia Dreyfuss] is great, absolutely fabulous in it. It’s great, thank you HBO! It would be great to do something like that, but you rarely get to reprise experiences. It’s kind of great, really, it’s a nice thing that you’re constantly doing different stuff. But I’d love to work with Armando again. I’ve stayed very good friends with David Rasche who played Linton Barwick in it, my boss. He is without a doubt the funniest man I have ever met. I was just worried that I wouldn’t be in the final movie because I corpsed every time he opened his mouth.  

On the subject of different experiences, you play Scott in The Fourth Kind. There is a particularly impressive sequence where you are reliving the experience of alien abduction. How do you get yourself into the mindset to play that?

I don’t know…Some people do the whole method thing, don’t they? The danger with that is being able to reproduce it. If you think of something that makes you feel scared or happy, after four hours it isn’t going to make you feel that way so you have to pretend. I think drunk people are good at acting because they’re kind of relaxed. I think that’s the key. I hate talking technique, it’s really horrible, but those kinds of scenes are nicer to do if you’re working with nice people…or your dog’s just died.

Of all the roles you’ve played, do you have a favourite?

[adopts an American accent] Well, my next role is my favourite…

You do a very good American accent too!

Thank you. That’s my degree, isn’t it? All the phonology stuff is actually really helpful, and because I spoke Italian from a young age. I don’t think it’s an ‘ear’, I think it’s just practice.

No, there isn’t a favourite role actually. There’s one I’d like to do again, because it’s a really good role and I didn’t do it justice, but I’m too old. It’s actually interesting that I didn’t do a good job because I was struggling with another cast member and I really let it affect me. It’s like any job, some people do your head in. I’d love to that again because it’s a really, really great role.

Are there any roles that you’d love to play?

You know what I’d like to do, I’d like to play a cop! Don’t know why, just because I’ve not done it. Whatever line of work you’re in you want to work with the best people, so in this specific career you want to work with the best writers and directors and actors. I’d really like to work with a director called Saul Metzstein. He directed Late Night Shopping, which was the second film I ever did. He’s super talented, way better than some of the dicks who get these ridiculously large budgets…

Your career has spanned UK and Hollywood films. What would you say is the biggest difference for an actor between the two?

Budget! In the US you have a few massive budget event movies, and that money comes from the medium to small budget movies. There are lots of micro budget movies – I’ve just produced one, which was good fun. Here it’s just a bit more British. It’s a bit more make-do, cosier, there’s just less pissing around. It’s a good thing. The last movie I did was Kick Ass 2 – I was thrilled to step onto that set, I loved the first movie, I genuinely did – and one week I’m in Toronto filming that and you just have too many people. Eight different ADs…you ask an AD to get something and they go ‘oh, I’ll ask the second 2^nd AD’, because the union states that it’s not part of their remit. The gaffer can’t pick up a light and move it. Here the gaffer’ll pick it up, move it, and they’ll shoot. It’s a more immediate process. They’re very different beasts.

You brought it up – can you give away anything about Kick Ass 2?

I can’t! Other than…Obviously I would be worried to be in a crappy sequel. Before I knew I was going to do it, it looks so much fun and you hope that you’ll go on set and you’re going to have than level of dicking around. I was doing most of my stuff with Christopher Mintz-Plasse and it was just awesome. He was so cool. He looks like you could snap him in two but he’s acting in the flesh just like you’ve seen him on screen for the past few years, it’s great. The script’s absolutely brilliant. What do you know about casting?

Errm…Jim Carrey?

Yeah. Didn’t meet him. It’s a shame. He was very generous. He held about three parties for cast and crew. That’s actually really cool. I’ve worked with some people who don’t do that. It’s a trickle-down effect. Everyone takes their cue from people higher up the cast list. So if cast member number one has a bodyguard with them at all times and gets a blacked out SUV from his trailer to make-up, doesn’t walk those fifteen yards, you know you’re not going to have fun!

You don’t have to answer this, but your wife [Sienna Guillory] also acts…

I like talking about my wife.

She plays Jill Valentine in the Resident Evil series. With both of you being actors, was there ever any professional jealousy there?

There was when I was younger, definitely. I can’t imagine there not being. But not now, and I just put that down to being more of a dick when you’re younger. It’s based on your own security, isn’t it? I guess that means I’m more secure now. She just got a job, which is like the best thing ever. It means we can eat next month. Our kids won’t die of starvation, which is a bonus! I think we’ve developed more of an appreciation of what it is to work. It’s so much better than not working! For our family, if one of us is working, everyone’s a winner.

What advice would you give to someone who wanted to become an actor?

My advice would be to just do it, wherever you can, whenever you can. If you’re a filmmaker, write stuff and shoot it. Fuck up, be terrible, make lots of mistakes. That’s kind of what I try to do, put myself where I’m potentially making a mistake, making myself look foolish as often as I can. Only then do I know whether something’s working. Just do as much acting as you can.

What will we see you in next, aside from Kick Ass 2?

I do a bit in the last series of Luther, and I’m in a movie called Supercollider for NBC Universal playing a Richard Branson-type figure. I’ve got a few things coming out, which is lovely. 

MP

Le Petit Nicolas (2009)

Image: Wild Bunch Distribution

There are few French children’s books that have proved popular outside of France – Le Petit Prince may well be the most successful – but thanks to this big screen adaptation, based on one of René Goscinny's beloved oeuvres, kids and adults alike will no longer be so quick to move along the library aisles and ignore the shenanigans of young Nicolas.

Taking its cue from the books, Le Petit Nicolas follows the titular character and his comrades on their day-to-day adventures as they get up to all kinds of mischief in the name of childhood. Add to that a desperate housewife, an ode to Les Choristes, and an animated opening sequence illustrating just why we love Jean-Jacques Sempé and you have yourself a humorous, charming petit film for all.

3/5

FG

Making Sense 4: Building An 'esSense' Across Cultures

December 2012 saw the fourth international colloquium organised by Making Sense, a movement dedicated to changing the world for the better through engagement with art, both as artist and spectator. The gathering took place at Paris’s Cité Universitaire, an international student village with accommodation for students from more than 100 different countries. This made for an appropriate setting for this colloquium, which looked to explore how art can be created and appreciated in such a way as to overcome the borders of nationality, race and religion, seeking a universality in artworks from disparate sources.

The morning began in the Fondation des Etats-Unis, with an introduction from the organising committee and a keynote address from American artist David Black. Mr Black had been invited to run a series of workshops in his new field of Tunisian Collaborative Painting. He outlined the process, which involves several people painting together on a piece in such a way that the final picture appears to be the work of just one artist, and spoke of his efforts to export the method to the United States.

David Black

New York based artist Katy Martin presented her latest artistic project, Berlin/NYC: Shot Counter Shot. Martin has, since summer 2011, exchanged one image a week with Lilly Grote, an artist living in Berlin. A simple concept, rigorously respected, their photographs provide a counterpoint to the information overload prevalent in our society: Martin described the difficulty in choosing just one image when it is commonplace to upload albums of hundreds directly onto Facebook. Such an exercise brings not only the cultural exchange between cities, then, but also a return to discernment in artistic matters, as in the days when holiday snaps would be taken with one or two 24 picture disposable cameras, and looking for the perfect image was so much more important than it is today.

Katy Martin

New York based dance troupe SYREN demonstrated the shared essence of words and movement in a performance of their most recent dance creation, ‘Hyacinth’. Words were issued as commands which elicited physical responses from the dancers. These movements were then drawn together in a dance, essence transmitted and transmuted from words into actions.

SYREN

SYREN dancing ‘Hyacinth’

The afternoon session moved to the Salle Corbusier of the Pavillon Suisse, with its stunning Le Corbusier mural. American artist Frank O’Cain provided a workshop based around a theme of ‘Drawing out the Essence’. Attendees were invited to participate in a pastel drawing, but rather than aiming for a collaborative effort, as with David Black’s project, here the aim was to overwrite the work of others, to smudge previous marks into an oblivion formed by newness. This palimpsest of drawing forced an abstract pattern to emerge in which new senses could then be traced, the additions mapped to draw out recurring themes and concerns.

Frank O'Cain

Frank O'Cain explains his process while David Black adds to the picture he started

Next, Puerto Rican artist Rosa Ibarra gave a touching talk about her work with the women in a young offender’s institute. Perhaps the most practical application of the theories underlying the Making Sense movement, Ms Ibarra described how she has brought the girls a sense of themselves through engaging in art with them – a practice which stemmed from Ibarra initially offering to draw them as a way of encouraging them to sit calm and still in order to avoid confrontations.

Rosa Ibarra

The concluding artwork was the short film ‘Impressions’ by noted French digital artist Jacques Perconte. Through the process known as ‘datamoshing’, Perconte repeatedly took tableaux of countryside and urban life and deconstructed them into visual ‘emes’ of pixellation, before fading them into each other. This blurring of the scenes suggested an entirely new field, a shared existence between the otherwise opposed spaces. A lucid and profound exploration of the colloquium’s central theme of cross-cultural essence, Perconte’s hypnotic visuals left a lasting impression of the power art holds as a force for giving structure and understanding to a complex world. Perconte recently performed the datamoshing for my film of the year, Holy Motors, and it was an honour to meet the man himself over some delicious macarons provided by artist-in-residence Claudiane Oulette-Plamondon.  

Jacques Perconte

There were many more presentations, with each attempting in its own way to provide artistic methods and philosophy for betterment of the fractured world we live in. The themes of the colloquium will be taken up and expanded upon in the next meeting of the group, taking place at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in July 2013.

Tunisian Collaborative Painting

The organising committee for the fourth Making Sense colloquium were Lorna Collins, Nicolas Jacquette, Bandy Lee, Jêrome Linigier, Laurent Marissale and Cadine Navarro.

MP (words and photos)

Paris, Je t'aime

In celebration of the release of Leos Carax's latest film, the fantasy flick Holy Motors, on DVD, and the fact that the two of us Wandercats have lived in Paris, we decided to share our love of the city with a couple of lovely illustrations.

NIGHT...

AND DAY.

Images: Fohnjang Ghebdinga/Fohnhouse

You may recognise the "Night" bridge (pont de Bir-Hakeim) from a certain Marlon Brando movie. Like Brando, I spent a lot of time on the bridge and, like J.Lo, on the 6!

FG