Issue #168 - The Spaces in Between
Issue #168 - The Spaces in Between
Summer Micro Issue #4 - Smoke Screen
Just like last year, I’ll be taking a break over the next four or five issues, so this is a shorter issue than would normally drop into your inbox. I hope that you enjoy this selection of links and pics, feel free to get in touch, and look forward to catching up later in the summer.
Except it won’t be that short, I’m afraid as I’ve a load of things to tell you.
You’re also going to have to indulge me in a spot of time-hopping. As you may have realized, I’ve missed these last two weeks while I’ve been traveling, and thought I might just cram everything into one issue, but now I’m thinking we’ll pretend it is the week before last, just a few days after the CALICO conference in Minneapolis. It’s a few days after driving to Washington DC to catch a flight to London. Monday at home catching up with my folks, then on Wednesday here I am taking a train up north to Sheffield.
I’m spending a few days at Sheffield DocFest, a long established festival celebrating new work in documentary filmmaking. This is a place where you’ll find directors, producers, broadcasters, content distributors, and those working in the industry, whether studying or teaching cinema. I also meet locals who attend every year, who love how the festival promotes and enlivens this already busy city.
This might be the first time that I’ve visited Sheffield, a south Yorkshire city famous for steel, just like Pittsburgh. There is a big university, Sheffield Hallam, in the city center and everywhere is walkable, a cathedral, town hall and lots of shops, hotels and public spaces including the Winter Gardens, a giant glasshouse with tropical plants where people can wander through or stop for a drink. It’s also a powerhouse of British music; Arctic Monkeys, Pulp, The Longpigs, (and Richard Hawley who played in both those bands) ABC, Human League, all hail from Sheffield. As it happens, I’m reading Jarvis Cocker’s Bad Pop, Good Pop which is a fun read, a trip through memorabilia, objét trouvé, and other strange periphery.
It’s been a fair few years since I attended a proper film festival where you dash between screenings, grab food on the go, search for obscure venues, local cinemas and meeting rooms in hotels and galleries. Venues are scattered across the city, including the famous Crucible Theatre, named after the type of steel that was forged here.
After the opening gala night, a screening of Tish, by Paul Sng, who also made a documentary about Poly Styrene, and uses a similar form of a daughter tracing her mother’s past. The next day, with my energy still good, I decided to hit the festival hard, opening with The Mountains, a touching film of family conciliation many years after a tragic childhood death, and then two shorts programs and another full-feature that evening.
One of the joys of the festival is bumping in the director of a piece that you’ve just seen. I met Taku, the star and creator of his film Tokyo Uber Blues having a drink outside the Winter Gardens, grabbing a selfie and commending him on his energetic movie, following a year of cycle deliveries through the pandemic, making a meagre living, occasionally sleeping rough and surviving on $1 noodles.
The shorts program offers new experimental works, some are the offshoots of film courses, others personal projects. I have to say that I enjoyed every single one that I saw, but a few stood out, including A Maiden Sings , the remarkable story, filmed by the grandson of a family who have had a live-in maid for 65 years, at once part of the family, but ultimately excluded, peripheral and apart. In photos she is a shadow on the edge of the frame, present in every moment, but always hidden from sight. I felt so angry and shocked by this film, it is a portrait of cruelty and inhumanity in close quarters.
I had a lovely chat with Misho Antazde, the director of Metabolism, where we meet a series of robots, each trapped in a nightmare of terrible jobs, literally shoveling shit or performing meaningless menial tasks. We joked that these might be the first to rise up against their human overlords, that we wouldn’t blame them for doing so. Misho’s next projects sound fabulous, exploring physics and scientific communication, keep an eye out.
As the week wore on, I paced myself with films in the morning, mostly and continued with the shorts program. Bad Press was another standout movie, based around the efforts of intrepid Oklahoma-based journalist Angel Ellis and her efforts to re-establish a constitutional free press for the Muscogee Nation. This is an amazing documentary, tense, with lots of political intrigue, great characters and a story with many twists and turns.
There were more films, maybe some that I’ll return to in the weeks ahead. It was a tough morning watching 20 Days in Mariupol, an important film, the footage is harrowing and there are many terrible scenes. It is remarkable seeing the footage that the AP reporters have risked their lives capturing only moments later shown in news reports across the world, without their bravery we would not see these acts first hand. The anger I felt leaving the cinema at Putin and his cronies, this despicable war that has caused so much needless pain and suffering, it needs to end now.
A few hours later I made space at my table for a man looking for somewhere to sit, only to strike up a conversation and realize that I was talking to the Alistair, father of the journalist and filmmaker Tim Hetherington who died in Libya in 2011 while covering the civil war. Alistair and Judith Hetherington present a prize each year for documentary, and this year awarded it to 20 days in Mariupol. It was a privilege to spend a few minutes talking to Alistair about the film, and the work that the trust was doing to preserve and share Tim’s work.
On Sunday, my last day, I attended the Alternate Realities Summit, contributing to a panel talking about the future of immersive media, with a group of content creators from games, audio, and film. We talked about the possibilities for this sector, the need for more established channels for distribution, and ways to make content more accessible, to greater numbers of people.
During the week, the Site Gallery has created a room of experiences, using headsets, screens and an immersive dome. I spent a few hours here trying out the different pieces, some I’d seen elsewhere, such as Singing Chen’s incredible The Man who couldn’t leave, which is perhaps the pinnacle of immersive storytelling at this moment, and new films such as No place but here by Dylan Valley, and Annie Nisenson, that again show how powerful and immediate 360 cinema can be. I chatted to Dylan and fellow Cape Town producer Adrian Van Wyk, about traditions of storytelling circles, bringing people into the experience, and forming bonds between documentary-maker and subject. At the same time, we listened to a talk about decolonizing storytelling from Derek Richards, who appealed for new forms of storytelling, in audio and immersive media, to not fall into the same anthropological traps that mainstream media is trying to avoid.
I could list many more films that moved me, it was such a wonderful week. There were lots of things to take home, ideas about how to develop my courses and potentially introduce some new ones. I thought about how we might develop our program of immersive media, bring new audiences to our room and do more to celebrate the work of creators and makers.
Thank You
I had half a list of links for you, but they’ll keep for later in the summer.
Sheffield was great, what a great city, I can’t wait to come back. It was sunny all week, which always helps, but I imagine this is a great city to learn in, and to be a creative, so many great arts organizations, and solid support. This week, I’m sorry to be missing Blink! an exhibition run by APG Printworks, pictured below.
We’ll keep up the time-traveling theme, who knows, you may get an extra issue during the week, and we’ll be heading to Nantes, in France. I hope you’re getting the hang of this, I won’t tell you where I currently am, for another two weeks’ time!
Hope you’re enjoying the summer. I hear of smoke clouds in Pittsburgh, take care everyone, close those windows and stay safe.
We’re off to the beach this afternoon.
Fascinating read, with so many great ideas. Honestly don’t know how you manage to squeeze so much into your days!