26th BFI London Lesbian & Gay Film Festival (23rd March to April 1st)

By Carmel Shortall

There’s something for everybody at this year’s London Lesbian & Gay Film Festival which promises to be bigger and better than ever. Choose from 53 features and 67 shorts as well as a strong selection of documentaries from all round the world.  The full programme was announced on 23rd February and the Lamp and Owl was there to check out clips of the festival highlights and drink pink champagne (what else!) on your behalf. The LLGFF is an ideal opportunity to see films from countries that don’t normally trouble the London circuit so take the opportunity while you can.A selection of the best includes Circumstance, set in Iran against the background of the youth subcultures that exist in spite of the Islamic Republic. It is a coming-of-age drama: teenage girls Atafeh and Shireen grow close and begin to explore their sexuality until Atafeh’s brother asks for an arranged marriage with Shireen.

365 without 377 is an Italian film exploring the experiences of three Indian activists in the year since Section 377 of the Indian Penal code was abolished, thereby legalising homosexuality.

Australian film, Ballroom Rules, is also an account of a year – this time spent in the company of same-sex ballroom dancers who are forbidden to compete in their native Australia, as they prepare to compete in the 2010 Gay Games in Cologne.

Also from Australia is autobiographical documentary – Orchids, My Intersex Adventure. Hart and Bonnie are sisters and both are intersex. They travel across Australia to talk to other intersex people before coming to terms with their own – especially Hart’s – story. You are advised to bring tissues.

Moving to the other side of the world, Argentinian film: Mother Tongue (Lengua Materna) has ‘settled’ lesbian, Ruth, finally come out to her mother who faints in shock. However, Mum rallies and decides to engage with her daughter’s lifestyle, exploring the scene, even signing up for lesbian bingo – just in time to support her daughter when Ruth’s life and long- term relationship come crashing down.

Of the three South African films featured, Beauty (Skoonheid), won the Queer Palm at Cannes in 2011 for its “disturbing and provocative” portrayal of a man’s disintegration when, unable to come out of the closet, he develops an obsession with the son of a friend.

Difficult Love, directed by photographer, Zanele Muholi, explores the experience of black lesbians living in South Africa today: whether rich or poor, all face the prospect of ‘corrective rape’ and murder.

Waited For (showing with Difficult Love, above) is a documentary exploring the lives of three multi-racial lesbian families.

Bol is the highest grossing film ever in Pakistan despite, or perhaps because of, its treatment of taboo subjects. Zainab tells her story to the cameras before her execution. She is one of seven daughters of a controlling, traditionalist father who wants a son but his eighth child is born intersex, throwing the family into disarray.

Chinese thriller, Speechless, explores gay life in contemporary China, as the mystery of a young man with memory loss unfolds.

In Our Future (Boku-Ra No Mirai), 19-year-old director Kashou Iizuka presents a semi-autobiographical tale of a teenage transperson growing up in rural Japan.

Two films finally from the UK – feature film, Stud Life and documentary, This is not a dream. The former is described as a “multi-cultural, polysexual tale of desire in contemporary London” and the latter explores how video technology “created a revolution in queer access to the moving image.”

Unsurprisingly, there are quite a few films from the USA. The Perfect Family stars Kathleen Turner as a devout Catholic mother who is nominated by her priest as ‘Catholic of the Year’ just as her daughter comes out as a lesbian, gets pregnant and announces her marriage to another woman.

Another, less ‘perfect’, American family features macho Enrique who gets out of prison to find that his teenage son, Michael, is transitioning to female and living as Vanessa in Gun Hill Road, set in in the Bronx.

Two music documentaries (also from the US) provide a change of pace: Hit So Hard is the story of drummer, Patty Schemel, long overshadowed by fellow Hole band member, Courtney Love.

Jobriath A.D. tells the story of ‘the American Bowie’, openly gay glam rocker Jobriath. An influence on Morrissey and the Pet Shop Boys, Jobriath proclaimed himself “the true fairy of Rock”. And, if you’re still in the mood for 70s kitsch, there is a ‘Glam’ party upstairs at the BFI in the Blue Room following Thursday, 29 March’s showing of the film. Dressing up is optional but definitely encouraged.

Not counting shorts or films previously released in the UK, more than half the films featured (26 out of 43) are directed by women: a statistic not borne out in the mainstream film world and yet another reason to get along to this year’s festival. This only a taste of the variety on offer at this year’s festival: for dates and times or just to find out more, check out the website. 

All films are showing in the BFI Southbank, Belvedere Road, SE1

Lamp and Owl request for submissions – Issues 2 and 3

Hi all,

We hope you enjoyed the inaugural issue of the Lamp and Owl!

If you missed it – click here for the online version: http://data.axmag.com/data/201203/U42844_F82868/index.html

We are now accepting submissions for Issue number 2 (deadline 2nd March) and Issue number 3 (May-June).

We are also keen to receive letters/emails concerning articles published in issue 1, as well as critical opinion pieces. Aim for 500 words for opinion pieces - if space permits we might ask for more.

We look forward to hearing from you soon.

The Lamp and Owl Team http://www.facebook.com/LampAndOwlMagazine

Read Lamp and Owl online here! 

Film review: The Artist

S Sheahan

Production year: 2011, Cert: PG-13, Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes, Director and writer: Michel Hazanavicius

Although the accolades it has received are a tad overblown, this whimsical flighty homage to the silent screen is still a delight. Set in 1920’s America, The Artist, all black and white photography and winsome leads (human and canine) opens at the premiere of our actor hero’s latest film.
Actually, less hero than narcissistic lovable bore (cue some fabulous jokes involving his spurned wife displaying her graphic talent as a lampoonist), George Valentin (Jean Dujardin) is a film star on the edge of a fall, as he is set up to meet Peppy Miller (Berenice Bejo) , our cloched It-girl heroine, on her way up.
The story couldn’t be simpler as bore meets cutie, bore suffers ruin, and, no surprise here, cutie comes to the rescue. Actually, the rescue is aided by another cutie, this time in the guise of a Jack Russell (Uggie).
Up down up down. It’s a metaphor that runs throughout the film most notably in the lovely scene where Valentin spies Peppy on a grand staircase as she ascends and he, of course, descends. In true tragic manner, it is the innate flaw of our hero that brings about his own downfall. Valentin is an egoist and he refuses to entertain the notion that the talkies are a serious threat to the silent artistry of the film world that he inhabits. Famous last words. Sort of.
With its sometimes subtle and sometimes knowing references to screen history (Valentin/Valentino being none too subtle but offset by a marvellous Rogers-Astaire dance scene and a bit of Hitchcock for the auteurs), this is a love story to the history of film, not just silent movies.
So convincing is French director Hazanavicius’s handling of this silent world that when we actually hear the chink of a glass, we are as surprised as Valentin himself. What a gift of a scene. But in the absence of speech the viewer is far more reliant on other cues to tell the story. There’s a delicacy to the design of The Artist which was surprisingly shot in colour and then converted into black and white. Director of photography is Guillaume Schiffer and lighting, which also deserves a mention, is by Laurence Bennett. Their combined talents elegantly enhance this beautifully shot film.
Supporting characters played by John Goodman as the studio boss and George Cromwell as the chauffeur are splendid. And I’ve already mentioned the dog.
The perfect date movie. Go and see it; even if you haven’t got a date.

 

 

Cinema notes
Where did I see this film: Odeon Holloway
Date: January 2012
On general release UK cinemas: click here for London details

Calling all aspiring journalists – write for Birkbeck’s student magazine!

Hi Everybody,The Student Union are relaunching the Lamp & Owl (or Lamp and Owl ) as Birkbeck’s student magazine (first issue to be published February 2012) and we are inviting contributions from current Birkbeck students.

If you fancy writing for the Lamp and Owl and feel you have something to say of interest to other Birkbeck students, please submit your articles, interviews, reviews, hi-res photos etc. to thelampeditorial@gmail.com We are interested in any fresh ideas. If you can accompany any articles etc. with your own high resolution photos, that would be great.

There is still time to submit something for the first issue if you get it in by the 20th of January or you can aim for the second issue – it’s never too early to get started.

Please contact us if you want to get involved in any way.

Some rough word count guidelines:

250/300/500 words for reviews; up to 500 words for comment/opinion pieces; 800-1,000 words for features; up to 800-1,000 words for interviews. As stated, these are guidelines and not set in concrete.

Follow us on twitter @lamp_owl, read/subscribe to our blog:  http://lampandowl.wordpress.com/  or find us on Facebook (known as lampanelle on facebook for the time being)

We look forward to hearing from you.

Lamp and Owl Editorial Team.

thelampeditorial@gmail.com

 

Film review: Hugo (3-D)

by S Sheahan

Production year: 2011, Cert: U, Running time: 126 minutes, Director: Martin Scorsese 

Turning his career on its head, and going all Spielberg on us, Scorsese has vividly imagined the deeply engaging story of an orphaned boy living in a Parisian station. Hugo is set to be the most entrancing film of the year.

Set in 1931, the opening sequence of Hugo pulls the audience straight into our hero’s world as the camera flies over a magical winter vision of Paris and glides down into the station while Hugo runs along a narrow platform between two steam trains, fighting his way through the thick of the crowd.

Hugo, played by Asa Butterfield, is 12 years old, and lives secretly in the station keeping the clocks going and repairing an automaton he thinks hides a secret message from his dead father. Accused of stealing from a toyshop, Hugo’s life intertwines with Monsieur Méliès, the shopkeeper (Ben Kingsley), and his daughter Isabelle. Méliès confiscates Hugo’s beloved sketch book and in his attempt to get it back, aided by the adventurous Isabelle, Hugo’s story becomes a mystery and a meditation on filmmaking, loss and redemption.

In Hugo, Scorsese has created the most visually appealing depiction of Paris since Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Amelie in 2001 which it resembles in its density of colour and richly imagined fairy tale tableaux. The world within the station is Dickensian in scope: there is Hugo himself, unloved, sad and living on his wits; a pair of cute dogs and their elderly amorous owners; and the lovelorn villain of the piece – the station inspector played by Sasha Baron Cohen in full nervous tic mode.

The mystery story involving Hugo and Isabelle takes up the first half of the film and will appeal to the children in the audience. But it’s the second half, where the life of the troubled Méliès is explored, that furnishes the film with a gravity and an intelligence that seeks to ask questions of its adult viewers. Here, without losing its younger audience, Scorsese gives us an imaginary trip into cinema history, and the repair of the automata becomes synonymous with the development of the moving image from silent films to talkies.

This change in film due to the development of technology is neatly paralleled by Scorsese’s use of 3-D, which itself promises to transform film making and audience perception. Scorsese makes exquisite use of this new technique as snow falls into our laps, motes of dust hang tantalisingly in beams of light and hidden passages, huge cogs and springs, vertiginous drops and reams of paper are all brought astoundingly to life.

Based on the children’s book The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick, Hugo has lost none of the magical elements of the fable following its transformation to film and the production benefits from the combined skills of production designer (Dante Ferretti), photographer (Richard Richardson), screenwriter (John Logan) and editor (Thelma Schoonmaker). The wonderful cast is supported by the gifted young actress Chloe Grace Moretz.

Scorsese has not made a children’s film: he has made an exhilarating, intelligent and engrossing visual wonder that will appeal to all ages.

Cinema notes

Where did I see this film? Emagine, Royal Oak, Detroit

Date: 19^th December 2011

On general release in UK cinemas. Click here for London details.

Review – Stand-Up Comics: a sitcom at The Etcetera Theatre in Camden

Review by Carmel Shortall

Stand-Up Comics is not stand-up but it is about comics – just not the two-legged variety. It is a play or a theatrical sitcom set in a comic book shop and, like all the best sitcoms, it is centred around two or three main characters who are constantly bickering.

Liam works for Kris in his comic shop and they also try to create their own comics together or they did until Liam got “page fright” – writer’s block as it’s more commonly known – and found another artist to work with: pixie-winged Ashlynn, his dream woman.

Their friend Liz arrives after losing yet another of her preposterous jobs and the three of them continue to bicker while they see off stroppy customers, their friendly local gravedigger and delivery man and, finally, Ashlynn herself. Liam occasionally takes time to ponder on the meaning of life, the nature of comics, and to wonder if there is a superhero laundry or if Superman has to wash his tights in the sink: “who washes the space-gunk out of Green Lantern’s Spandex?”

Inevitably, somewhat begrudgingly, they realise that they need each other before heading off to the pub.

 

Kapow!

Stand-Up Comics is crammed with gags, in-jokes, smart one-liners and comic book references but you don’t need to know anything about comics to enjoy it. There are some moments of brilliance – Liz and Liam having a mock comic book fight as they argue with each other; the idea of the shop having survived a hipster infestation and Kris’s description of having Liz around as “like being trapped in Arkham with a bat villain”  

Larissa Kunstel-Tabet’s economical set design conveys the ambience of a comic shop with a few boxes of comics, a couple of printed boards and a prominently placed notice suggesting that customers wash their hands before handling the batman comics.

The cast are excellent; particularly writer/director Michael Eckett who plays Liam and Sandy Jarvis who plays the ditsy and irrepressibly perky Liz, gazing fondly at her toes because she thinks her nail polish attracts bees.

After a successful run at the Camden Fringe Festival in August (part of which was cancelled due to the riots) it can now be seen at The Etcetera Theatre, 265 Camden High Street above The Oxford Arms pub, just a short distance away from Birkbeck, until Sunday 27th November at 7:30pm every night except Sunday when it starts at 6:30pm. Tickets are a mere £7.50 each. Try and catch it – it’s great fun!

Review: A Walk On Part – Soho Theatre. Chris Mullin’s diaries on the fall of New Labour brought to the stage.

Review by Carmel Shortall

 

It may seem an unlikely subject for a night’s theatrical entertainment but A Walk On Part, Michael Chaplin’s adaptation and distillation of Chris Mullin’s political diaries is funny, absorbing and cracks along at a terrific pace.

John Hodgkinson as Chris Mullin

John Hodgkinson’s portrayal brings Chris Mullin’s honesty, humanity and self-effacing wit to bear on the follies, mistakes and, to Mullin’s mind at least, the successes of the New Labour years. The audience are guided from the heady days of May 1997’s landslide election victory to the fall of New Labour in 2010 by way of 9/11, George W. Bush, WMD, the Iraq war, MPs’ expenses and the financial crisis as Mullin progresses from backbencher to junior minister and back again.

The other four members of the cast – Sara Powell, Tracy Gillman, Hywel Morgan and Jim Kitson – between them bring to life a vast number of characters ranging from ‘JP’ (John Prescott) to ‘The Man’ (Tony Blair) and Clare Short to Mullin’s wife, Ngoc. Some of the impressions are spot on: the audience particularly enjoyed a demonstration of how long it takes for a smile to get from Gordon Brown’s brain to his lips.

A Walk On Part does not just concentrate on events in Westminster but is peppered with the less glamorous concerns of a constituency MP (Sunderland South) as well as providing touching vignettes from family life including Mullin’s wife’s observation that he’ll need more than one suit when he becomes Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Department for the Environment, Transport and the Regions (whew!).

Staging, by Max Roberts, is simple but effective. A screen at the back of the stage flashes up iconic images such as the planes smashing into the twin towers and key dates to keep us anchored in the story’s timeline. The other cast members weave in and out of John Hodgkinson’s performance seamlessly, making the whole seem effortless and shorter than its two hours.

Whatever you think of New Labour’s politics, A Walk On Part offers an insight, albeit an unfeasibly gentle one, to the Blair and Brown years as well as to the potentially more interesting character of Chris Mullin, himself.    

For the performance, audience members are seated at tables, cabaret style and, while this may take some getting used to, it does not hinder enjoyment especially as there is a bar in the same room. All in all, a fun night out in a terrific venue.

Performances run until December 10th at 7:30pm with matinees on Thursdays and Saturdays at 2:30pm. There are no performances on Sundays. Tickets are generally £15 full price, £12.50 concessions (students, disabled, seniors, Westminster residents and unwaged) although some Fridays and Saturdays are £20 and £17.50 respectively and matinees are £12.50 full price and £10, concessions.  

The Soho Theatre is at 21 Dean Street – only about 20 minutes walk from Birkbeck.