//Time destroys all things\\
\\Time heals all wounds//
//Time destroys all things\\

My hero.

"My log hears things I cannot hear. But my log tells me about the sounds, about the new words. Even though it has stopped growing larger, my log is aware"

What is it about smell that induces nostalgia so effectively? I often wonder about how effective a form of cinema would be which could create a fabric of smell to accompany image. A form which could effect a total recall of the 'good-times'.

I wish there were some way of capturing smell, in order to induce memories of a certain time or place. If such a device were to exist, (a small glass vacuumed bottle, with a cork stopper, which could suck in perfumes and fragrances, immortalising a period of time, a date, an event in a few cubic centimeters), I would code the olfactory present, and preserve the olfactory past, for the benefit of my olfactory future.

I find myself manufacturing this kind of nostalgia through music, something which is far less potent in conjuring that crashing feeling of 'long-lost' kitsch which smell can evoke so well. On the occasion that in the present, I am able to forecast a nostalgia: a nostalgia which will only make itself evident after a certain amount of time leaves me detached from it (childishly self-conscious, I know); I find myself faced with an overwhelming desire to code that moment with a particular album, or song. For example, Black Mirror by Arcade Fire reminds me of travelling from Newark through to central Manhattan on the train, whereas Maria by Blondie will always carry memories of childhood - sitting in the back of my father's car and driving to the beach in the evening. 

I live in perpetual fear of the day that hearing a particular song reminds me of the time when I self-consciously sought to immortalise a piece of the past in the future. It is at that precise, horrifically meta moment, that I will have failed. It is also at that precise moment, that the nature of nostalgia will have shifted.

Nonetheless, if a contraption existed for preserving smells, I would cultivate a shelf full of quaint identical bottles, all containing their own memory. They would be locked in a small room, for me to indulge in. The bottles would be labelled, not with time, or place, or even a description of the contained smell, but rather, names, or events, to which those smells pertained. 

I feel like the creepy guy from that John Fowles novel The Collector.  

Excuse me.

BOOKS FOR SALE

Okay, so I'm cutting a few of my books loose. 

I'm going to say £1 for each.

Leave a comment, or tweet me at @garethaledavies if you are interested.

Jean Rhys - Wide Sargasso Sea (Penguin classics)
George Saunders - The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil
Frank Herbert - Dune 
Cormac McCarthy - No Country for Old Men
Joseph O'Neill - Netherland (Harper Perennial)
Samuel Beckett - Molloy (Faber & Faber) - Bargain right there! ;)
Wordsworth and Coleridge - Lyrical Ballads (Routledge Classics)
Stuart Maconie - Pies and Prejudice: In Search of the North

13 Assassins

Director: Takashi Miike

Starring: Kôji Yakusho, Gorô Inagaki

Run time: 141 minutes

Rating: ***

To glance back over Takashi Miike’s career in film is to subject oneself to some of the strangest, most disturbing scenes in cinema history. From fully grown humans giving birth to, well… fully grown humans (Gozu), to sliced off faces (Ichi the Killer), to catatonic lactating women (Visitor Q), one might wonder, after having directed over 70 productions, whether Miike’s well of perverse possibilities might be running dry.

13 Assassins sees the notorious director moving in new directions, and embracing a form which seems in some ways more mature than the twisted and bloody yakuza dramas he is most well-known for. Nonetheless it is a movie which shows us that Miike has certainly not lost his flair or identity as a director, despite this change in topic. Managing to seamlessly marry his taste for the bizarre with the established and structured jidaigeki form, he makes it his own, and injects life into the somewhat stagnant genre. The insertion of trademark Miike moments never jar with the overall tone of the movie, as one might be inclined to expect. Instead they often add a sense of (quite literally) dumb horror, or alternatively odd moments of comedy, which are distinctly refreshing.

However, unique as Miike’s quirks may be, one can hardly fail to notice the movie’s inevitable tie to its filmic ancestors; in particular the father of the genre, Akira Kurosawa. This is something which holds the movie back. Miike establishes a team of 13 samurai who will ambush the tyrannical Lord Naritsugu in order to restore peace to the realm, much in the same way as Kurosawa introduces his seven samurai, who seek to ambush bandits intent on pillaging a small village. 13 Assassins is even replete with a distinctly Kurosawan commentary on the arrogance of the samurai, and a bandit character who is a blatant cariacature of the wonderfully charismatic Kikuchiyo. It is perhaps this intertextuality which is one of 13 Assassins’ most unfortunate downfalls. Having almost twice as many samurai and almost half as much tension, viewers find themselves unwittingly making negative comparisons.

But make no mistakes about it 13 Assassins is a solid film in its own rite. When compared to Seven Samurai so many chanbara fall short, but this does make them any less valid as independant works of art. The slow pace 13 Assassins renders its long-awaited climax scintillating, as a brooding sense of tension is crafted over ninety minutes of conference and character development. The film ends on a blistering fifty minute battle scene where we see exploding cattle, fancy sword-play and perhaps most memorably, torrents of blood raining from the sky. Whilst the movie’s use of set-pieces, and the choreography of sword-fights is nothing less than spectacular, at thirty minutes in the scene begins to slow, the violence becomes saturating, and the dramatic effect of such gore inevitably begins to wane. This is unfortunate, as a basic issue of restraint compromises a denouement which begins to reek of squandered dramatic potential.

City Limits

Sate your melancholy soul.

Timelapse - The City Limits from Dominic on Vimeo.

Waste Land

‘What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow out of this stony rubbish’.

 

We’re all familiar with T.S.Eliot’s magnum opus The Wasteland. But does its message of a planet in decline still resonate with the world we live in now? Yes, says Lucy Walker, and more than ever before. Her new creation Waste Land, influenced in part by the poem, is a documentary about the world’s largest rubbish dump, Jardim Gramacho of Rio de Janeiro, and the self-appointed catadores (scavengers) who work there. Sifting through the 7,000 tons of Rio’s rubbish deposited there every day, they hope to earn their living by searching out recyclable materials such as cans, bottles, plastic, and paper.


Today almost 20,000 catadores live at the site, scavenging 200 tons of waste a day. Entirely dependent on an economy based on the trade of recyclable materials, they have extended the life of the landfill site by removing materials that would otherwise have been buried. The catadores might have given Jardim Gramacho the highest rate of recycling in the world, but the fact remains that it is not a sustainable future. Amidst the fear and squalor of Rio, the catadores, half of whom actually live and sleep in the rubbish, choose this career as a last resort. Faced with drug trafficking, prostitution, or garbage as a way of life, they choose garbage.


But don’t be fooled Waste Land isn’t just a ‘day in the life’ snapshot into the work of the catadores, but an artistic collaboration. It documents the relationship between these rubbish collectors, and Brooklyn based artist Vik Muniz, who seeks to create portraits of them using the waste materials of the dump – bringing a new meaning to the idea of recycling. Muniz’s use of rubbish as a medium for artistic expression is unconventional to say the least. He explains why it interests him: “The beautiful thing about garbage is that it’s negative; it’s something that you don’t use anymore; it’s what you don’t want to see.”

By creating portraits of Rio’s poor out of ‘garbage’ his task becomes highly symbolic. In fact rubbish seems a perfect medium for this type of artistic venture – representing a group of ignored and forgotten people through something we “don’t want to see” is both fitting and provocative. Director Lucy Walker remarks that across the way from Jardim Gramacho you can see Christ the Redeemer reaching his arms out to the wealthy south, explaining that “They say even Christ turns his back on the north of Rio, where we are.” Waste Land is not just a project focussed on exposing human and environmental concerns, but as a criticism of the economic disparity in Rio, and the government’s reticence to address the problem of the catadores.


Director of the project Lucy Walker speaks about what influenced her to make this movie, saying: “I have always been interested in garbage. What it says about us. Where it goes and how much of it there is. How it endures. What it might be like to work with it every day.” Speaking on location I hear that answering these questions proved more difficult than anticipated: “just when you get used to the smell they find a human body, or mention a leprosy epidemic, and the sound man passes out... there are so many things to be afraid of from dengue fever to kidnapping”.


Vik Muniz states that what he really wanted to do with Waste Land was “to change the lives of a group of people with the same materials they use every day”. The portraits Muniz creates from the waste of Jardim Grammacho are sold at auction and all of the profits accumulated are given back to the catadores, to help them build better, safer, sustainable futures for themselves. “I hope the movie serves as a means for us to see our journey to becoming involved with people so far from ourselves,” Walker says, encouraging us to get involved, and take responsibility. By granting the viewer an emotional connection with the catadores, Muniz and Walker are able to demonstrate the transformative power of art, and the alchemy of the human spirit.


Waste Land inspires  the viewer to take the time to think about how much waste we generate as individuals, and the effect it has not just upon the environment, but our fellow human beings. “Garbage is the negative of consumer culture”, Walker says, “it's everything that nobody wants, and when it disappears from everyone's lives, rich or poor, it doesn't disappear at all, it appears here.” Muniz and Walker’s project is not just based on recycling waste materials for artistic ends, but encouraging us to recycle our own perceptions of waste, the environment, and the people it affects.

16mm: An Economy of Negatives?

 
In the late 1920s, as the first few movies managed to successfully synchronise sound and image, there was suspicion, and even outcry in the world of film. Silent film was seen by many as a pure visual medium which, uninhibited by sound, offered a unique aesthetic virtue, for it ascribed a primacy of expression to the muted body, which had to convey meaning through dumb mime, gesture, touch, and even dance. Film was an art of the body, to be undercut, diluted and radically altered by the new-found opportunity to express meaning through speech. Many asked themselves: of what interest was a form which synchronised sound and image? Which reflected reality so intimately?

Of course with any technological or cultural advance, there are those who embrace change and evolve, and those who cling to what they cherish and know best, despite what the status quo may dictate. Silent films are made today, but when was the last time you saw one? The times change, and the sad fact is that certain media forms are overtaken by others, and find themselves lingering on dusty archive shelves. But does this really have to be the case? The old debate between the silent film traditionalists, and the advocates of the ‘talkies’ is not mentioned in vain, for we find a similar debate at play in contemporary society, regarding what is often referred to as the ‘digital revolution’ in film.

Three months ago the UK’s last professional lab to be printing 16mm film, based in Soho, was sold. Its new American owners say that they will discontinue 16mm. Within a couple of days of this announcement thousands of signatures had appeared on the ‘Save 16mm’ petition, and a number artists faithful to the medium spoke out against the development. As the grip of the digital age tightens, could the death of 16mm in the UK signal the start of a more widespread and damaging revolution, involving celluloid en masse? 

Despite 16mm’s status as a growing medium for artists in recent years, it is becoming less and less economically viable to produce, the cost of shooting a DV film and using digital post-production software pales into insignificance when put in contrast with the time and money involved in preparing celluloid. But doesn’t celluloid have a certain inimitable warmth? Doesn’t it carry an aura of sorts? Isn’t there something comforting about its grainy texture, something vaguely nostalgic, something soulful? Isn’t that alone something worth fighting for?

Advocates of digital film will no doubt tell you that it’s cheap, quick, and offers brighter and clearer images, but isn’t the artistry of using celluloid bound up to a certain extent in its preparation? In cutting the film from the rush print, sticking the shots together with tape, spooling, splicing, colouring each individual image in a transformative, alchemical process. Working with super16 requires the film-maker, as Tacita Dean has stated, to become both artist and artisan, in a hands-on creative process which requires more than just the clicking of buttons.

There have been claims that 16mm is an ‘outdated’ medium, which few use. Contrary to popular belief some of the most successful movies of the past few years have been shot on super16, including Oscar winners Black Swan, and The Hurt Locker. But as digital begins to take over, we find ourselves more and more concerned with clarity, high definition, ‘quality’, and the ability to shoot, produce and edit films to short time frames.

Far from stating that celluloid is better than digital it is clear that both mediums have their unique benefits, but why should we have to compromise one for the other? Celluloid finds itself at increasing danger of being trampled under hoof by digital. Digital film seems more and more to satisfy a dominant cultural mode of transparent mediation, allowing for a crispness and clarity of image which celluloid could never attain. But just because celluloid offers a different aesthetic effect to the consumerist norm doesn’t mean it should be cut. In fact this is precisely a reason to fight for its longevity. But as HD and 3D become increasingly desirable and profitable, celluloid’s downward spiral seems set to continue.

The ascent of one form of film-making shouldn’t mean the destruction of another. As a progressive society, and patrons of art, we should be encouraging and incubating open-mindedness in the process of filming and editing, and this should include protecting celluloid from excinction. However, the form can only be protected so long as there are people willing to fight for it. Like the transition from the silent films to the talkies, there is no doubt that digital is the way forward, but the ability and opportunity to experiment with celluloid should not be denied anyone.

Child of God

Few writers share McCarthy’s talent for abusing language to poetic effect. His distorted, crooked, broken syntax allowing for a literary experience which exudes as much cerebral as visceral power. Child of God, McCarthy’s third novel, can perhaps be read as the genesis-point of the author’s recognisable aesthetic: funnelling the pared down prose style of Faulkner, the dark lyricism of Poe and the gritty realism of Steinbeck, into a form which is unshakeably American.

Child of God is the tale of Lester Ballard, perhaps one of the darkest, most disturbed characters in McCarthy’s oeuvre. Ballard is an outsider, a loner, a character who is as much a creature as a man. Lurking in a dark, dank cave, and interacting primarily with the festering corpses with which he adorns underground lair, Lester is a disadjusted individual who, out-casted by his country-men, descends into paedophilia and necrophilia.

Child of God is a novel which perhaps more so than No Country for Old Men, or The Road, or even Blood Meridian, presents itself as a work of aesthetic potency. McCarthy’s use of antique words, which furnish the frame of his narrative, facilitate an unprecedented beauty, a dark, primordial lyricism, which lends Ballard an almost mythical stature. McCarthy creates in Child of God a narrative which stretches the very sinews of language with Shakespearean liberality, and in doing that, offers a haunting insight into the mind of a psychopath.    

Pantha du Prince - Asha

I only discovered Pantha du Prince recently. Addicted to his second album This Bliss. If you have spotify check it out. He's influenced by an avant-garde musical tradition, heralded largely by Cage, based around the idea  that all sounds are music. His particular sound gives pride of place to negative space, his songs seem to drift, musical structures are held together by a relentless beat, which orders chaos. It's really beautiful stuff, and inspires me to start making my own minimal, avant-garde electronic music. Perhaps that's something to start doing over summer.