Happy St Andrew's Day!

Today is St. Andrew's Day and although I am no longer living in Scotland, indeed perhaps because of it, St. Andrew's Day has made me remember all the things I love about my home country.  The mountains, the forests, Glasgow, Fife fishing villages, Skye, the history, the arts and culture, and of course family and friends.

I liked this wee animation on Scotland.org which gives a brief history of the story of St Andrew.




I just posted a photo on my work Twitter as well - via our Twitpic.  Zoe, the other film cataloguer I work with, set up the Twitter and we both use it to post stills from the films we're cataloguing.  It's useful if we're stuck on identifying a place or building as we can post an image and get help from other people!
The photo I've posted, of the Forth Rail Bridge, is somewhere I'll be seeing soon as we're off back up to Fife at Christmas time.

I'm in the process of writing a longer post about my new job - which I'm really enjoying! - but the dark nights are holding me back as I struggle to get the laptop out and do any work when I get home!  I'll get it finished and posted soon though.

Giving thanks

This post is a slight departure from usual in that it has nothing to do with archives and not much to do with film.

I've been reading a lot of interviews with Apichatpong Weerasethakul recently about his recently released film Uncle Boonmee who can recall his past lives.  The interviews have really struck me as, as well as coming across like a really nice guy, Weerasethakul makes some really simple but incredibly profound and meaningful statements.  I just like his simple way of wording things and some of his words came to my mind yesterday when I got the terribly sad news that a friend of a friend had recently passed away.  I knew Jose too and having seen him only a few months ago found the news very hard to take in.  He loved Thailand and was planning to return there to live and work so it seems fitting that the words of Weerasethakul gave me some comfort. 

This is the section that came to my mind when I got the sad news:

‘So, we are going to die right, you and I?’ opens Apichatpong Weerasethakul conversationally. ‘One day we are all going to turn to dust. But we will not disappear,’ he adds reassuringly.

‘We just integrate and transform into other things. In classical reincarnation you are reborn into another animal but I believe it’s more like an energy, what Buddhists call a transmigration of souls. The idea we connect with everything: with the sunlight, the Earth, the animals – we are all recycled. That’s what I’m interested in.’

It's not like I hadn't heard these ideas before, in fact it fits in with my beliefs, but I think to read it in the Metro newspaper on a crowded tube on the way to work just really hit home how powerful and how complex these simple sentiments really are.

To finish this post I though I would use a beautiful image which my mum drew, with some inspirational words from Thich Nhat Hanh which she used as the centerpiece.  She used to have it hanging on her bedroom wall so she would read the words every morning when she woke.  I don't have this up on our wall yet but I do try and remember to smile first thing when I wake up and give thanks in that way, through a quick thought and a smile.  

So I just thought that on this day of Thanksgiving in America I would take the opportunity to write a few words to give thanks for love, for friendship and for this beautiful world we live in.  Jose's energy will live on through his friends and family and all the people he has met along the way.

Rethinking Lindsay Anderson

I am really looking forward to this evening 'Rethinking Lindsay Anderson' at the BFI Southbank on Tuesday 23 November.  It will be a screening of a number of his early documentaries, including Idlers That Work (1949) (New Print), Henry (1955) (New Print) and Foot and Mouth (1955).  I'm sure it will be really interesting to see these films, some of which I haven't seen before. I'm also really looking forward to the panel discussion with Walter Lassally (cinematographer who worked with Anderson on Wakefield Express, Three Installations, Thursday's Children, A Hundred Thousand Children, Henry, Green and Pleasant Land, Foot and Mouth, The Children Upstairs and Every Day Except Christmas), Erik Hedling (film scholar who wrote 'Lindsay Anderson, Maverick Filmmaker) and Lois Smith (a lifelong friend of Lindsay Anderson's who provided his entry into filmmaking by inviting him to make a film at the factory her husband ran (this film was Meet the Pioneers 1948).  

Lindsay Anderson's 'O Dreamland' screening in London

There will be a screening of Lindsay Anderson's O Dreamland next Thursday in London as part of a night of poetry, performance and film screenings under the banner of 'Plectrum Live Edition'.   The event 'Plectrum Live Edition: Postcards from the Promenade' is organised by 'Plectrum - the cultural pick' - an arts magazine published on-line and bi-monthly in print.  I heard of this event via The Horse Hospital - this is an arts venue in London. In their own words "The Horse Hospital is a three tiered progressive arts venue in London providing an encompassing umbrella for the related media of film fashion, music and art." Oh, so many things to explore when I move to London!  Although unfortunately I'll miss this event as I'm travelling back up from London on the 23rd after a few days flat hunting and starting a film course at Lux - Opening up the Archive - a Guided tour of Artists Moving Image.

Here is some more information about the event which the screening of O Dreamland is a part of:

"Returning from a seaside summer holiday, the first Plectrum Live Edition of the autumn mixes postcards from the promenade and the view into the fairground fortune teller’s crystal ball, with fresh perspectives on the sights and sounds of London, to present an evening of author readings, film screening, live music, poetry, and more with Travis Elborough, Lindsay Anderson’s O Dreamland, Karen McLeod, The Vatican Cellars, and Benedict Newbery, hosted by Guy Sangster Adams."

Thursday 23 September at The Horse Hospital, Colonnade, Bloomsbury, London WC1N 1JD.  Doors at 7.30 performances begin 8pm.    Tickets £6 on the door.

Set in a funfair in Margate called 'Dreamland' Lindsay Anderson's 1953 film O Dreamland wasn't actually screened until the first Free Cinema programme at the National Film Theatre in 1956.  A short film of 12 minutes which tours round the funfair showing the 'attractions' which in this film appear very bleak, and at times, sinister.  The effect of the film is described brilliantly by Gavin Lambert in an article he wrote on Free Cinema:

 "Everything is ugly... It is almost too much. The nightmare is redeemed by the point of view, which, for all the unsparing candid camerawork and the harsh, inelegant photography, is emphatically humane. Pity, sadness, even poetry is infused into this drearily tawdry, aimlessly hungry world."

Lindsay Anderson on location for O Dreamland,
© Lindsay Anderson Collection, University of Stirling Archives

N.B. The funfair at Margate is still there today although it closed in 2005.

N.B. If you are in a Library, College or University which has an account with BFI Screenonline then you can watch O Dreamland  for free online at http://www.screenonline.org.uk/film/id/438978/

A Lucky Find

I'm just back from a week's holiday in Crete where we had a lovely time enjoying the beautiful scenery and lovely hot weather, eating tasty local food (including lots of fresh fish), and basically relaxing after the recent hectic time of the end of my post at Stirling University and celebrating my husband's new job and our imminent move to London - yay!

So on our return from Crete we're spending a few days in London exploring some of the areas we're thinking we might move to.    Yesterday we were in Stoke Newington first which we both really liked but which is maybe not going to be feasible re commuting.  Anyway we had fun exploring and of course doing a wee bit of shopping.  On our wander we came across a lovely shop on Church Street which drew me in with the lovely array of vintage tea pots I could see through the window.  They also had a great selection of prints, including reproductions of Cuban film posters.  I wasn't planning to buy anything but when I came across this poster for Lindsay Anderson's O Lucky Man! (1973) I just had to buy it!  The artist is Antonio Fernandez Reboiro and the poster is from 1977.  I didn't want to take the poster out it's plastic until I get home so apologies for the poor quality of the image but the quality of the art work shines through I think. 

I don't know much about Cuban movie posters but found a few interesting blogs that will start me off on a bit more reading when I get back to Glasgow - for now we're off to Borough Market for some tasty food!

Here are the blogs I came across:

Tales of a Cinesthete

Cuban Posters