The 15th July deadline is fast approaching to submit your fashion film to Diane Pernet’s A Shaded View of Fashion Film 2011.

The festival “shakes up the old rules of fashion by putting the focus on the moving image, in an industry long dominated by the “still” photographic medium. The common thread that binds this diverse program is the use of fashion, beauty and/or style as the principal subject, theme or cinematic aesthetic. The festival is a study in the drama, power and personification that fashion evokes and commands on screen.”

ASVOFF 4 will be held at the Centre Pompidou in Paris from October 7 – 9, 2011. The three-day festival will screen a kaleidoscope of short films (30 seconds to five minutes long), exploring the themes of fashion, style and beauty through the medium of the moving image.

Submit your work here.

If you didn’t manage to catch their programme last year, you can treat your way through their archive and last year’s programme (warning – there are a lot of images to load so your browser may go a little doolally whilst they load…), which is a feast for inspiration.

And for a more in depth understanding of the festival, listen to the legendary Diane Pernet, founder and creator of A Shaded View on Fashion talking about her vision for the film festival.

About 2 years I went to look at a really amazing house in Ballance Road as a potential place to live. It was huge, an old, former convent. Spooky huh. The idea was a semi-utopian “lets get a bunch of artists into a big house and create a haven of creativity”, well that or “okay so what sort of people wouldn’t mind sharing a big old vintage house with dodgy bathroom decor and about 30 other people…”. The room I really liked the look of had lots and lots of flies on the windowsill. I took a photo. I was super excited but never heard back from the people who showed me round. Rude. And its now looks like its been converted into a whole load of modern flats with ugly generic interiors. Double sigh. I wonder what happened to the flies.

Last night I went to see Cria Cuervos at the BFI. Apparently the title comes from the Spanish proverb: “Cria cuervos y te sacarán los ojos” (“raise ravens and they’ll pluck out your eyes”).

Its an incredible film. So intimate and touching, and funny, and beautifully, kindly cruel. It felt very appropriate to be watching this film in the modern day, a film that centres around memory and fantasy and loss and nostalgia, and it really felt so modern, like it could have been made this year.

Ana Torrent who plays the precociously solemn child at the centre of the story was so compelling, such a believable portrayal of a character that will strike a chord with anyone who felt a bit miserable and imaginative as a small girl. She’s a total child heroine, and I’d watch her over Natalie Portman’s Mathilda in Leon anyday.

Speaking of which, I was curious to see what Torrent is up to nowadays and saw that her and Portman were funnily enough in a film together – The Other Boleyn Girl. I haven’t seen it and have no desire to, so I watched some clips on YouTube with Ana Torrent in them and I think she’s still got that haunting, heartwrenching presence that made Cria Cuervos so effective.

Here’s the trailer of Cria Cuervos:

And here’s Ana Torrent now, showing them how it’s done:

Oh and I’m completely addicted to the cheesy emotional Jeanette song featured heavily in the film. I’m listening to Serie 3×4 (Karine, Massiel, Jeanette) on Spotify to get me through this rainy London day.

I am a massive fan of anything vintage, always have been. Many a holiday has become “complete” in my eyes (excuse the early pun) after an accidental stumbling across a flea-market-carboot-tabletop-sale-charity-shop-junk-pile of some sort. This enthusiasm for the elderly item extends not to just clothes, shoes, bags, furniture, music, films and books, this also includes what I put on my face to help me see.

Here is just a small part of the sprawling hoard of the old glasses I have accumulated over the years thanks to rummaging around in Brussels, Cologne, Berlin, London, eBay… not forgetting the surviving spectacles that my siblings and I wore as children courtesy of the stylish NHS.

I don’t wear the above, far too fancy for the everyday face. I stick to 2 pairs right now – one 80s vintage plain clear wayfarer style pair and one modern Specsavers £25 special two tone brown wayfarer style pair. Oddly enough, I think this collecting is some kind of legacy from my mother, who kept hold of our childhood glasses and used them in her Fine Art degree show. It must have made an impression on my 9 year old self. Well, that and years and years of enduring the darn things (I was 2 when I became 4 eyed). I was delighted to have recently acquired some beautiful glasses at an outdoor vintage market during a recent trip to New York. Particularly pleased that I could actually get them “made up” and wear them, to like, actually see and stuff. Amazingly, the prescription is uncannily similar to my own (what are the odds eh!), but I mustn’t be tempted to dodge forking out £100 or so for the correct Harriet Fleuriot sized lenses…

So it was with great joy that I was invited to the launch of London Retro‘s first range of vintage inspired eyewear, tempted by the promise of a complimentary pair of glasses. Sounded right up my street. Apparently the team behind London Retro were “inspired by the eclectic trends of the capital and the range reflects the quirky style that can be seen in London’s coolest hangouts, from Hoxton Square to Portobello Road.” Each individual design is named after the “style hubs” of London, and you can almost travel through the ages as you mark their heyday – Shoreditch, Camden, Hoxton, Fitzrovia, Carnaby, Soho, Portobello…. it’s a sweet and evocative way of conjuring up a romantic vision of all sorts of vintage fashionistas, before placing them on your face and imagining yourself away into that era. This spirit of retro roleplay was helped along by some old school sweets, cheese and pineapple on cocktail sticks, and a dressup photobooth at the launch. Shooting People‘s Helen Jack helped me pout and pose through what we now call our “Assassin Parrot Sluts” series.

I must admit I was a little bit sceptical before seeing the London Retro collection, as so many of these retrospective modern frames have these ‘orrible ugly twists to them that ruin the classic shapes and colours. If you’re going to go doolally, then go all out, don’t unclassic a classic please. But I think London Retro has avoided this wonderfully and pulled it off with a beautiful and wholesome set of frames that could (almost) pass for vintage.

My favourite were by far the tortoiseshell Fitzrovia and a dark tortoise Soho and I have ordered myself a pair of each from Glasses Direct. Though the part of me that is purist is still not entirely convinced about the pinky bits on the Fitzrovia, they just looked too good everywhere else to resist. I really can’t wait to stick ‘em on me mug. Maybe I should get my haircut in preparation…

Last year, Duncan and I had the pleasure of having the entire Lexi Cinema to ourselves to watch Catherine Breillat’s Bluebeard. Although I was mildly disappointed with the ending, which failed to match up with the heroic and empowering melodrama of Angela Carter’s Bluebeard, I thought it was a superb and refreshing piece of cinema. Now a bit of time has passed and I’ve gotten over my teenage nostalgia strop (that’s when I read the Bloody Chamber and was rather influenced to say the least…) I think I may even really like Breillat’s portrayal of the ending now, fully respecting it for its appropriateness to the film’s style. So we are waiting with baited breath for her next experimental fairytale escapade – Sleeping Beauty.

Back in May(yes waaay back then!) I was invited by my good friend and regular comedy collaborator Ali Coco Epps to the launch of Under/Current Magazine Biblical:05 on Kingly Street in London. Doing a little bit of research beforehand, I visited their website and found on their front page a video to watch - a fashion film, U/C’s first fashion film no less, called Blomqvist. I rather liked it’s retro, spacey, eerie dance performance quality to the piece, I do like a bit of unusual dance movement.

At the event, I found out that the film was shot by video artist Alexandros Pissourios alongside Hanna Putz’s Under/Current fashion shoot in Cyprus. A regular occurance I suppose, lots of fashion shoots have someone with a moviecamera lurking in the background or the photographer will take on the role of moving-photo-maker. 

I bought a copy of the magazine – a beautifully put together, thoughtful publication with a bit of an edge – and looked at the photoshoot. Somehow Blomqvist does a little more than plain documentation or mimicry of Putz’s work. It builds on the atmosphere, creates something quite intrigueing and graceful to watch, an abstract narrative even, and so documents the photoshoot but delves deeper into portraying its world. Does this sit on the edge of both documentary and fiction? It was particularly interesting to me at the time as it was just before Fashion Popcorn was preparing to go to Sheffield Doc/Fest and so we were on the scout for fashion films that played with the documentary theme.  

What I found even more thought-provoking was the way I had experienced watching the film. I first discovered it online, watching it with headphones in, screen expanded, it was a full visual and audio pleasure. Then there was the launch event, which had a screening of the film to a room full of people, but when I got there it was a deserted, cold basement (everyone was busy flaunting their best fashion wear with booze in hand on the cobbled street outside). I watched the film on a big screen made of two halves of paper. You couldn’t really hear the audio because the DJ upstairs felt the need to be very loud to hit the sprawling exterior crowd. It was just such a contrast.  

I mused about the way in which this video had been used to promote their launch event – like a carrot on a stick to drive the crowd into the physical world from the online world, to brief them on the aesthetic of event, to represent the magazine’s stylistic stance. And then, it felt like the real reason people were there – to network and to be part of something, to be part of an event, part of a gang – sort of took over and left the film a little redundant and neglected. In some way, this gave the video installation some poetic credit, the lonesome audience member in the concrete basement reflecting the lonesome figure in the concrete landscape of the video. I quite liked it. Had they planned it that way? I imagine not. And I don’t think that devalues their intentions for the event or what was happening outside.

By nature, film has always been a medium that you can watch in other venues, in different sizes, with different audiences, but technology is really expanding the variations on these factors, and this experience is a very simplistic example. With the click of a button, it is also easier to watch something over and over and over again, and we have become accustomised to multiple viewing and sharing of content in multiple places to multiple people. As the audience, should we actively seek out these different viewing experiences, across both “online” and “offline” worlds? Does it bring more meaning to the film to watch it or experience it in different ways? And are these opportunities being used to the best advantage for both viewer and maker?

On Friday I received a message from a performance artist I know called Tom Marshman that I’d like to share:

“Last week I was locked away in a rehearsal room at Battersea Arts Centre developing a new performance which for the moment I am calling Legs 11. The show explores the rather unglamorous world of varicose veins. So searching for inspiration I came across this hilarious film:

So now I have decided to enter with my legs, scarred from one operation in January and still varicose from the pending next operation (it’s on Saturday!) I have remained determined that my old legs should be considered beautiful too. So my target is to become Legs 11. My forthcoming show will document my journey, comment on some wider and larger issues and make some playful jibes about beauty, the fetishisation of legs and our eternal quest for perfection!

So here is the thing.

I NEED YOUR CLICKING TALENT!

Go to http://apps.facebook.com/legseleven/ Allow the App to access your info (this will NOT post things all over your profile or contact all your friends about it, it’s reasonable). Once on the PrettyPolly page, under the photos see “VOTE FOR YOUR FRIENDS HERE”, there should be Tom’s photo (if you are friends on facebook). Click on Tom’s photo, and he will appear as one of two photos to choose from. Click on his to vote!”

I clicked on the facebook app, both entertained and in admiration for Tom’s quest. I found over 600 little thumbnails of (mostly…) ladies legs, headless, torso-less, many heeled to the nines, oiled up, pointed, bare, encased neatly in little shop windows for you to choose from.  I couldn’t help but feel it was a bit reminiscent of a reader’s wives competition, or more extremely and simply, the Rossebuurt.

Then I also thought of the Miss World competition, when Brand Director David Hinchcliff explained Pretty Polly are looking for “just an ordinary member of the public… obviously a great pair of legs but with a great personality that really represents the brand values perfectly…”.

I wonder how they are judging personality. And just where are the details of Pretty Polly’s brand values, so I know whether Tom is in with a chance of winning?… Tom’s Performance is supported by Chisenhale Dance space and developed at BAC and Bristol Old Vic Ferment.