The cart before the horse: Addenda to a contribution to Senses of Cinema's 2012 World Poll

Or, everything really is cinema, more or less: part one in an ongoing series

Your humble correspondent pausing
a moment to pose alongside a
prostrate Otesánek, who, doubtless a mite
peckish, is just biding his time...

Senses of Cinema's annual world poll supplement will be posted online early in the new year. Meanwhile, so itching have I been to ensure there's some new content gracing this seemingly moribund blog before year's end, and so eager to expand, especially illustratively, upon some of the arguably more fanciful aspects of what I've contributed to Senses of Cinema's latest poll, with particular respect to claims towards the everything-is-cinema-ness of all things, that, well... here we are!

Some of what follows – whether for better or for worse, I cannot say – will adopt certain of the characteristics of a travelogue. This is somewhat unavoidable as this post's central cases in point were the stuff of recent adventures abroad, for, not so terribly long ago, I was summoned to my beloved city of Prague to sit on a jury at Mezipatra, the Czech Republic's wonderful queer film festival, or at least for the Prague leg of it. Now, to either side of my gleefully adopted Mezipatra duties – not to mention right smack-bang in its midst as well, of course (samozřejmě!) – I had me some (extra-)cinematic adventures, as demonstrated below and which will link to my corresponding part in Senses' 2012 world poll, as and when it's live.

By the way, wrapped up in all the pictorial splendour and waffle below lies in wait an allusive announcement, whose time I can comfortably say has almost now come, with respect to a project of mine and certain esteemed others set to launch in mid-2012 and shake up stuffy old Melbourne town, where too many film festivals is never enough...

But let's deal with one horse before its cart at a time – on with the picture show – roll camera!

Here's the rather de Chirico-esque big-screen backdrop above the stage at Kino Lucerna ahead of this year's Mezipatra closing ceremony. Should I hasten to add that de Chirico was cinema? After all, I've just watched Alain Robbe-Grillet's Eden and After (1970) (thank you thank you thank you! the Slovak Film Institute, for releasing this on DVD!), and if those scenes in the Eden nightclub weren't de Chirico all over (if also a few parts Mondrian, after a '60s Godardian fashion), then my name isn't Cerise Howard, and nor has it always been.

(Mezipatra's website hosts a fab gallery covering its closing night, which was altogether rather busier and more glamorous than my photo above would suggest, and in which I make a few appearances.)

Now, I could scarcely have timed my journey to Prague any better. For unbeknownst to me at my journey's outset, what should happen to be on in the very centre of olde Prague but...

"Jan Švankmajer: Dimensions of Dialogue – Between Film and Fine Art"

in the House at the Stone Bell in Prague's Old Town Square
(26 Oct 2012 – 3 Feb 2013)

Per my world poll contribution, "Dimensions of Dialogue" is "room after Rudolphinian room a-glut with Švankmajeriana. Magical, obsessive, capital-S Surrealist objects abound, all riffing on relationships, direct or indirect, with Švankmajer's 48-year-long filmic output, with one film, whether long- or short-form, looping in its entirety in each room, and the exhibition's great plenty of uncanny objects organised correspondingly. Magnificent!"

Please find here following a corroborating, annotated gallery:

This is a room devoted to Conspirators of Pleasure (1996), which also featured a number of "tactile portraits", object-characters from the film and, centre-frame, its unforgettable masturbation machine, which had in fact been switched on for the exhibition. (On which note, Prague's Sex Machines Museum is just a hop, skip and a wank away from the House at the Stone Bell and the Old Town Square, but I don't recall it having anything half so elaborate, nor half so modern, let alone half so amusing, as the Conspirators of Pleasure machine amongst its offerings. If anything, as memory serves – I visited it several years ago – its exhibits are not terribly far removed from those in Prague's cheesy mediaeval torture museums...)

In the room devoted to Historia Naturae, Suite (1967) can be found collaged drawings and objects, imaginary creatures, and taxonomic descriptions thereof galore, in a fabulous demonstration of the full rein Švankmajer has always given himself towards the creation of alternative zoologies, ones to long outlive we sadly less fabulous critters to presently have the run of our grimly imperilled planet.

Natural enemies in the wild?

The scenes in this and the preceding image have more than just a little in common with Salvador Dalí's 1936 painting, "Autumn Cannibalism". See also the second section of one of my favourite Švankmajers, his final short film, Food (1993).

A tableau familiar from Alice (1988). This, like so much of JS' work, is equal parts Švankmajer and Švankmajerová.

Characters and sets from Švankmajer's Alice.

Waiting in the wings with some of the cast from Švankmajer's Faust (1994)

Some of the cast atop and within a set from Faust.

Several of the oversize puppets from Faust, and one oversize human from Wellington, by way of Melbourne.

Scary prop from Švankmajer's The Pit, the Pendulum and Hope (1984), as designed by the late, great Eva Švankmajerová. Fortunately, perhaps as much an OH&S consideration as anything else, it was rather more still in the exhibition than in Švankmajer's brilliant film. I don't think Poe has ever been as frightening on screen as in The Pit, the Pendulum and Hope.

Otesáneks, and parts thereof, galore. As seen in Little Otik (Otesánek) (2000).

Oh, and did I mention that I actually had a chance early morning encounter at a Prague tram stop with Švankmajer himself? Were that I could have captured the look in my eyes in that moment they locked fleetingly with his! Were too that I wasn't so dumbstruck by the occasion that I so easily let him slip by my clutches before I could surprise him with some strongly Australasian-inflected Czech, conveying some sort of gormless, grating, ingratiating précis of my adoration of his work ever since I first encountered it in the '90s. Actually, perhaps it's for the best I did keep my mouth shut after all. Next time, though, Švankmajer, next time... I'll be prepared!

"Slovanská epopej" ("The Slav Epic", Alfons Mucha, 1912-1928)

Now hanging permanently, if not without controversy, at Veletržní Palace, a campus of the National Gallery in Prague

Now, I may have made some slightly contentious claims in my poll contribution, if, I would argue, not really either as specious nor as spurious as all that, for Czech Art Nouveau godfather Alfons Mucha's 20-colossal-canvas-strong magnum opus "The Slav Epic" as cinema...

Here follow only a meagre few photos – my photography simply hasn't done these magnificent pictures justice – in under-substantiated support of certain aspects of my flimsy hypothesis. Happily, much better quality reproductions of Mucha's magnificent masterwork can be found all over the Web, and they do my lunatic theorising far prouder than my own underwhelming photography here can hope to.

This is the 2nd canvas in "The Slav Epic" – now, I ask you, is that a big screen, or wot? (Refer relative size of awestruck, darkened space-inhabiting gallery patron to artwork.) This is "The Celebration of Svantovit in Rügen" (1912).

This is a detail – almost a close-up, even – of that same canvas, from centre bottom. To stand but a foot away from the painting is for mother and child to fill "the frame". This woman's eyes have haunted me ever since I laid mine upon them.

Eyes no less haunting – a detail from the 1st canvas of the Slovanská epopej, "The Slavs in Their Original Homeland" (1912).

An awful purdy doodad which wouldn't be at all out of place in Argento's Suspiria (1977) but which is in fact merely a detail of the 5th canvas in "The Slav Epic", "King Otakar II of Bohemia" (1924).

Further postcards from Europe to prop up one's claim that everything is cinema

And now for a little more photographic everything-is-cinema-ness, surplus to requirement as addenda for my contribution to the 2012 Senses of Cinema world poll, as I in no way alluded to the following in my poll text, nor need have. But I no got worry.

I'll let the photographs, if necessarily aided to some extent in each instance by their captions, speak for themselves...

Elsewhere in Veletržní Palace, this permanent installation pays tribute to the great puppet animator, Jiří Trnka. (He was pretty handy in a few other fields, too.) There'll be more from me about Trnka hereabouts, and in the pages of Senses of Cinema, soon – that's a promise! (For many happy reasons which will become apparent in due course.) It's a shame about the shadow of a certain gormless pillock in this one. Reflective surfaces: the scourge of amateur photographers everywhere!

In the same room as the Trnka installation can be found these gorgeous vintage film posters. The two leftmost are for Gustav Machatý's 1931 film, From Saturday to Sunday. "Jsem děvče s čertem v těle" translates as "I'm a girl with the devil in (her) flesh"; it's credited to director Karl Anton and is instantly as tantalising a film to hunt down as any I've heard tell of any time lately.

Also from that same room. I haven't figured out which films these gorgeous images pertain to – something by Martin Frič, perhaps? Anyone, any leads?

Oh lookee here – seems we've taken a wrong turn mid-exposition, as can happen, and have wound up in Vienna.

The Wiener Riesenrad – which is to say, this is the Ferris wheel seen in The Third Man (d. Carol Reed, 1949) in Vienna's nowadays impossibly kitsch Prater amusement park.

Kitsch? The Prater? With this photo, I rest my case.

Still: what is this post if not a paean to the "Magic Dreamland" that is the cinema, anyway? And is that really any less naff a term than "Dream Factory", that popular epithet for Hollywood?

Well, that'll do for now. I've more piccies from other far-afield adventures in cinema recently had, but it'd be remiss not to save some for another day, which would greater risk this blog's going another few months without an update...

But wait – a pledge! Yes, I hereby pledge, contrary to all recent indications, that this blog will actually regularly feature new content in 2013. Truly!

Let's see then if I'm not yet as good as my word. (And here I'll confess to knowing something you don't, at least, not for very much longer – my year in film in 2013 will be a very busy one, and it'll sure need some documenting and ballyhooing here. Stay tuned!)

Toodles for now then,
C.

Of recent gads had about Central Europe; the near future, and points of intersection

Long-time scanners of A Little Lie Down will know that many a post hereabouts begins along the lines of “Well, gosh, it's sure been a while between drinks” before leading into some sort of lame apology.

Well, with that acknowledgement made I can dodge that particular bullet for this late November '11 stocktake instalment of ALLD and just get the hell on with it.

Yes, a stocktake

A stocktake, that is, of things to come, of things to have recently occurred, and intersections thereof.

Two reasons for my not having contributed much to my own blog lately are:

1) I have an awful lot to write before this year is over for publications other than ALLD, publications of a reputable nature which, unlike ALLD, actually and necessarily operate to deadlines.

2) I have been preoccupied by being overseas, attending festivals in Cottbus (Germany, in the old East, not far from the Polish border and where all signage is in German and in Sorbian*), and in Prague, which dovetails neatly into item 1), for one of the things I have to write is a report on the 21^st FilmFestival Cottbus for Senses of Cinema for its next edition, and another is a report on the 12^th Mezipatra, the wonderful queer film festival in the Czech Republic, which I have notions I'll be submitting to another particular esteemed film journal, though I'd be foolish to say here just which when I couldn't altogether be said to have run it past them yet.

* No, this is not a typo.

I won't go into too much detail about either of these festivals here, in the interests of dodging ultimate duplication, other than to recount a few personal highlights of Mezipatra which would not necessarily be the stuff of a more formal festival report:

Chief amongst my highlights was moderating a Q&A with Todd Haynes after a screening of Far From Heaven (2002), chased down with a few drinks at Prague's legendary Kavárna Lucerna with the highly affable, accessible director; his lovely partner; a few fellow guests, and various of the Mezipatra staff. At Mezipatra director Aleš Rumpel's behest, I found myself toasting the table as only one too deeply versed in the Australian vernacular can, with a wholehearted “up your arse!” This, happily, went down rather better than, in hindsight, it conceivably might have.

Also: a day or two prior Mezipatra held, upon the hallowed ground of FAMU*, a Todd Haynes masterclass, conducted by Variety critic Boyd van Hoeij. Now you too can enjoy, as did I, a front-row seat for this terrific discussion. Haynes is a terrific speaker, warm, erudite and generous in equal measure, and there's well over two hours' worth of his thoughts upon the cinema - his, and all that which has inspired it.

* FAMU is, rather awkwardly in English, the Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague. Read the list of notable alumni (some, like Věra Chytilová, these days serve as faculty!) on FAMU's Wikipedia page – and weep!

Here, notwithstanding my slight, doth-protest-too-much, old-school discomfort with embedding video content on my blog wholly the (recent) creation of others, is “Todd Haynes Himself” - the superb Todd Haynes masterclass given on the occasion of his retrospective at the 12^th Queer Film Festival Mezipatra in Prague.

Alas, there isn't (as far as I know) any video footage of my Q&A with Todd Haynes, but here at least are a couple of photos so I can still commemorate the occasion here. (With many thanks to Josef Rabara for the photos.)

The author (l) with Todd Haynes. This is immediately after a screening of a spanky 35mm print of Haynes' sumptuous Far From Heaven. Little does the director realise it, but deliberately pinned to my accidentally apt '50s-ish tuck shop frock - accidentally apt, that is, as I had in fact been prepared to conduct a Q&A that day after my favourite Todd Haynes film, Safe, rather than after Far From Heaven - is a badge bearing a detail of a photo, taken by the amazing Gregory Crewdson, depicting Julianne Moore in a state of terrifying domestic narcotism, bought originally in 2008 at a Crewdson exhibition held in Prague's Rudolfinum, as if to summon Todd Haynes to Zlatá Praha, celebrated alchemy capital of the world, within a matter of but three years...

(l-r) The author, Todd Haynes, festival director Aleš Rumpel (mid-translation) and programmer Lucia Kajánková. The latter two, atop all of the powers they demonstrate in abundance for Mezipatra in their respective roles, have truly formidable translation skills, taking turns in rendering into Czech some wonderfully well-considered but very, very lengthy responses from Todd Haynes to questions posed to him, whether by me or by members of a happily, highly engaged audience.

And now, especially for non-Czech readers of this blog and anyone else who wasn't at the festival and so likely hasn't seen this year's Mezipatra trailer, here then, the better to give you a sense of the festival's flavour, is this (dir: Tamara Moyzes):

Lastly on Mezipatra (for here and now), here's a photo of the beautiful, 102-year-old Kino Lucerna, taken on Mezipatra's Opening Night.

I love this place, even though the projection is occasionally a little pants.

Now, if you were to look closely, you might just spot me in the second row, covered in owls. A cautionary note: it is no longer safe to purchase a dress covered, one might have thought uniquely, in owls, in Hobart, under the unconscious presumption that its like will never, ever be seen North-si-eed, hemispherically speaking. However, the very day following the Opening Night shenanigans in Prague, I spotted the very same dress prominently on display in a groovy little Prague boutique. Globalisation, amongst its many other evils (and, granted, certain goods) has sadly increased the risk of same-garb embarrassment a hundred-thousandfold. None of us are safe from this scourge, no matter how far flung our travel destinations. None of us!

Which brings me, sans an elegant segue, to:
Critical failings of film festivals in Australia...

Chatting with the lovely Boyd van Hoeij in Kavárna Lucerna one evening, we got to talking about his role as one of four (including the delightful, impassioned and sage Tom Kalin – and hasn't Swoon (Kalin, 1992) aged brilliantly well!) adjudicating on the features jury at Mezipatra this year. While Boyd spoke of greatly enjoying his jury duty, having been on many juries previously, I had to confess that I've never served on a film festival jury, and instantly felt something a hick.

This point now dovetails neatly with a near-future engagement of mine to have just emerged. Come Thursday next week – that's December 8, at 7pm – in the absence of Josh Nelson, I'll be joining the remaining 2/3 of the fabulous Plato's Cave film criticism podcasting team – Thomas Caldwell and Tara Judah – on the second of their nine week live-to-air summer season on my beloved Triple R 102.7FM, already home to my regular fortnightly radio gig, “A Fistful of Celluloid” on Richard Watts' Thursdaily artsopotamus, SmartArts.

Per the Plato's Cave formula, I'll chew over three current releases with Tara and Thomas, with the remainder of the show turned over to discussion of some film cultural matter or other. It already having been suggested that I might like to tell a few stories from my recent European adventures, I further proposed that that

could easily be linked to a wider consideration of film festival culture and, in particular, to what I consider a major failing of film festival culture in Oz: a certain parochialism/provincialism, something which I feel has a negative trickle-down impact upon critical practice here (amongst other things).

When last did a festival here afford local critics a chance to mix with international peers (whether in a formal capacity, say, on a jury) or just through attracting international media to our far shores? Is not film criticism in Australia largely practiced in one great, blinkered, whitebread vacuum, largely marooning Australian critics with only their own for company (little wonder they so often turn on one another), robbing them of opportunities to develop a more internationalist perspective of film (festival) culture, notwithstanding the richness, diversity and heft of the foreign big screen offerings that unspool here more and more every year?

I'd already started to write a stroppy great rant about as much for this blog but would now rather instead focus those energies on delivering the same on Plato's Cave tomorrow week, whereupon Thomas and Tara can immediately present the case for the opposition, if there is much of a one, or at least get several strong opinions of their own on the matter in edgeways.

And after that episode has gone to air, and the podcasting fairies have waved their magic wands across it, I'll be sure to post a link to it here for all whom should transpire to miss it live but wish to catch up with it later.

Another very good reason for publishing something, right here, right now

Truth is too that I needed something to hang a promo on for the Australian Film Critics Association's Film Writing Awards, lest AFCA secretary Bernard Hemingway otherwise find out where I live and pop round to break my knees in frustration at my not having let him know what I, as a card-carrying member of the illustrious AFCA, would be doing (if anything!) to promote the AFCA's awards.

And, so, lo! Behold! And: go forth and compete!

I'll hasten to add that I'll certainly submit something to these awards myself, ahead of the looming deadline of December 31. Perhaps it'll be something to have first had a run here at A Little Lie Down. Perhaps, indeed!

I'll also give the awards a plug when I return to the Triple R airwaves a little later this morning at 11.30, joining Richard Watts on SmartArts and yakking about George Clooney's The Ides of March, Megan Doneman's documentary on Asia Nobel Prize winner, Kiran Bedi, Yes Madam, Sir, and this and that else besides.

*

A personal film criticism and publication diary for the remainder of 2011

Today, Thurs, Dec 1: I return to SmartArts.

Thurs, Dec 8: I fill in for Josh Nelson on Plato's Cave.

Mid-late Dec – I'll submit a report on the 21st FilmFestival Cottbus to Senses of Cinema (along with as many as two book reviews: dekalog 3: On Film Festivals (guest ed. Richard Porton) and Playing with Memories: Essays on Guy Maddin (ed. David Church)). Yikes!

Thurs, Dec 15: SmartArts – Reviews of Lars von Trier's Melancholia and Pedro Almodóvar's The Skin I Live In will be the likely order of the day.

Sat Dec 31: Deadline for submission to the Australian Film Critics Association's Film Writing Awards.

Also, then or thenabouts:

I will submit a review of Alexandra Heller-Nicholas' Rape-Revenge Films: A Critical Study to Bright Lights Film Journal (I must mention that I saw an absolute cracker of just such a film in Cottbus, in new Russian feature, Twilight Portrait (dir: Angelina Nikonova)).

I will submit, presuming such are once more solicited, a wrap of the year that will have been 2011, to Senses of Cinema.

And I must submit a report on Mezipatra 2011 to a certain journal as well.

Busy times! (During which I believe the 3RRR subscriber magazine, The Trip, will post a slightly premature Top 10 of mine for 2011 as well. (What? - you don't subscribe? Well, that's easily remedied – now get cracking!))