I am positively beaming to announce that I have become a member of the UnderWire Festival advisory panel, set up to help shape, support and spread the word (and eat a bit of soup and cake on the way). We held our first meeting last week, tucked up in a doorbell-free London flat, Soup a la Jack in bellies, talking through plans, discussing the festival ethos and how it fits with the programme, sharing ideas, things we’ve seen and heard about, and all that jazz.
UnderWire has got the extraordinary Gemma Mitchell and Helen Jack at the helm and these seasoned event maestros don’t mess around, so its safe to say that you’re all very much in for a treat again this year. Plus we have some incredibly inspiring and talented Patrons and wonderful Media Partners supporting the festival.
For those of you unfamiliar with the festival, UnderWire was launched in November 2010 with the belief that women working in the UK film industry needed more encouragement and a bigger platform for their work. The fact remains that women still make up a small proportion of film creatives, and UnderWire looks to recognise the best short work made by women across a range of crafts.
With awards for Best Director, Best Producer, Best Writer, Best Editor, Best Cinematographer, Best Composer and Best Film Journalist, the festival hopes to move us towards a more gender balanced industry. There is also the XX Award which is open to both female and male directors whose films have interesting female characters at their centre. This, UnderWire believes, will benefit everyone by creating a diversity of perspectives, stories and experiences for audiences.
The festival accepts work of different genres including drama, animation, documentary, music video and artist film and the submission deadline is 16 October 2011. The full guidelines can be found on the UnderWire site at www.underwirefestival.com. As months progress, UnderWire will be announcing news of events, screenings and interesting happenings so keep your eye on the site.
For those of you who have seen my work, it will come as no surprise that I rather like Cindy Sherman’s work. So it was with great excitement that I find out she has created some new portraits as a result of a new collaboration with MAC:
No stranger to fashion, Sherman collaborated with Balenciaga last year, producing a similarly bold and provocative collection of photos that appear to both mock and court the fashion world. A brave and comforting decision from both Balenciaga and MAC, afterall everyone loves to laugh at themselves, don’t we?
And MAC has a habit of picking out diverse muses from across the creative industries to help promote their collection – recently Nicky Minaj, Wonder Woman, Gareth Pugh, Barbie, Dame Edna Everage, Marcel Wanders, Lady Gaga, Disney, to name a few, and now of course Cindy Sherman.
From reading press release extracts and if we were to crassly categorise this campaign as a big advert for MAC, the art/commerce exploitation condundrum that Fashion Popcorn seems unable to avoid in its salon discussions, rears its little head once more – “In the campaign we’ve longed forever to conceive, Cindy Sherman for MAC created three characters using three different colour stories. We’re living in a time when people of all persuasions have become bolder than ever about the ways they choose to express themselves: with a colourful palette of possibilities, You are the Artist, You are your own Subject, and no matter how fearfully you begin, you become fearless in the process.”
So then who is the artist? - the creator, the promoter or the consumer? Where does the “artist” sit in the value chain for brands? Who is gaining what from who? Just where does art and commerce begin? Is the collaboration between brand and artist equal? If not, does that devalue the creativity of the artist?
Despite these questions playing on me, I love the fact that MAC are engaging non-fashion industry fashion-orientated people and allowing those people to keep some artistic integrity (whatever that is…). Although this approach is not necessarily an innovative brand building tactic, their clever trust of Sherman shows they are willing to innovate their brand representation within an self-image savvy world AND playfully pay appropriate homage to their creative heritage as the makeup choice for professional makeup artists. Its not all about fashion y’know.
Next week, Duncan McGonigle and I are exhibiting work at Wobble and Squint‘s new exhibition - Taken Away.
We have been invited to show a video, called A Sprinkling of Sweetheart Seasoning, edited from the performance footage we shot for Their Hearts Were Full of Spring for their set at Leeds Festival. The piece was very much a response to the experience of working together creatively as a couple, reflecting on how the process of making the footage had an amusing effect on the way we communicated with each other.
Wobble and Squint is a non-profit artist collective that is being developed by artist-curators Errol Fernandes and Anne-Laure Franchette. Their aim is to bring together diverse groups of creatives to present fresh, eclectic exhibitions that excite and challenge.
We’d all love to see you at the private view in Exmouth Market, on the 28th July 6pm – 8pm. More details on the Facebook page.
How much do we love this woman? ALOT. The Fashion Popcorn team like to gush about Julie, spurred on by inspiring encounters with her at London Fashion Week and at Birds Eye View’s Fashion Loves Film event earlier this year. Her new video, in collaboration with Neil Emery, is full of beautiful, fun images that pop out and make you want to eat it all. Or buy it. Its a very clever advert for all the products featured and the rough-at-the-edges aesthetic disguises any commercial intentions with a soulful, playful, artistic feel. With hardly any moving image at all, its rather like looking through a very cool tumblr blog, but without having to click any buttons. Read more about her ideas for the video on AnOther.
Still from If You Are Happy And You Know It
Oh and looking through those credits at the end, I spotted someone I know. A talented lady who designs fruity jewellery concoctions and goes by the name of Rosita Bonita.
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.
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.
Image from Martins Graud's LUST LUST. Awarded Best Film at ASVFF 2010.
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.
I am positively beaming to announce that I have become a member of the UnderWire Festival advisory panel, set up to help shape, support and spread the word (and eat a bit of soup and cake on the way). We held our first meeting last week, tucked up in a doorbell-free London flat, Soup a la Jack in bellies, talking through plans, discussing the festival ethos and how it fits with the programme, sharing ideas, things we’ve seen and heard about, and all that jazz. 
Social Links