Category Archives: Film

Stronger than Fiction is ‘Stronger than Strong’

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Deborah Kingsland, Stronger than Fiction Director, introducing the festival (the image behind her is from ‘The Magical Life of V’)

Dendy Cinema Canberra
31 July to 18 August 2019

To borrow a line from one of my favourite anime’s theme songs (Gigantor) – the documentary film festival Stronger than Fiction is ‘stronger than strong’ this year. Canberra is home to a cinematic treasure – ‘Stronger than Fiction’ and has been since the Canberra Centenary in 2013. This year is its sixth. I have been to three festivals, and last year attended all the screenings, as I will this year. I am now a shameless groupie.

I can attest to its power. Beware. Last year after viewing ‘The Island of the Hungry Ghosts’ I could no longer just grieve and anger in my heart and mind about offshore detention of refugees that arrive by boat in Australia. Watching the trauma counsellor on that island explain to her young daughter about her clients (the people detained), the images of sand play in her clients’ therapy that reflect their trauma, and the migration of the crabs across Christmas Island (for which all the humans stop) that seems to echo the great human migration of our times, to the rituals for the hungry ghosts of Chinese labourers who never received a proper burial, so moved me that I had to act. It galvanised all my thought and feelings and reading about this dilemma to finally act. But that is another story.

The Co-Director, Hannah de Feyter, describes the curatorial approach of Stronger Than Fiction as having no brief but excellence, but themes and tendencies do tend to emerge each year. This year the festival depicts a number of strong older women, like Hatidze the beekeeper in Honeyland, Lea Tsemel human rights lawyer in Advocate, and photojournalist Letizia Battaglia in Shooting The Mafia. The environment, the value of persistence, and how we engage with the internet are themes that have also emerged. More than half of the films are directed by women (something I like).

A feature of Stronger Than Fiction is question and answer sessions with directors and the audience. This year In My Blood it Runs’ Maya Newell (and producer Larrissa Berendht) and Midnight Family’s Luke Loren will attend and audiences can quiz them with all those questions one has straight after viewing a doco. These sessions are riveting for film lovers. Another aspect of this festival is the audience vote, which I always find a little bit difficult because I want to rate all the films as number 1. The ten top films will have encore screenings over the two weekends following the festival.

In the festival preview we viewed Sea of Shadows and were immersed in the cradle of acquatic life that is the Sea of Cortez. This film is billed as an eco-thriller, and it really is. It follows a journalist researching the illegal fishing and trade in the swim bladder of the totoaba fish, ‘the cocaine of the sea’, which is so valuable that the trade involves the underworld of Mexican cartels, the government trying to control it, and scientists and conservation activists trying to protect the sea creatures, and the exploited locals being driven into debt. It is life or death for the fisher people, the journos, the endangered porpoise the vacquita, and the crews of the Sea Shepherd. The film unravels a net as complex and deadly as the illegal nets tangled through the Sea of Cortez.

I will leave you with a link to the program and trailers, and I may see some of you lucky Canberrans there. For others, watch out for these film when they are released down the track; Stronger Than Fiction always gets it right.

https://strongerdocs.com/#/2019-program/

 

 

 

 

 

 

PULSE: reflections on the body

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Pulse

 

he finds my pulse, pulse—

milk squirts—our—blood—drum—strum—his—

small hand— on my throat

I have a rather rapid heart rate and pulse rate that is most likely encouraged by high levels of caffeine. I found it embarrassing when I was at school when such things were measured in Sport and Science. (But then I think I found nearly everything at school embarrassing.) And I have caught myself wondering over that esoteric observation that everyone is allotted a certain number of heartbeats in this life; that this is predetermined. In my case, this is not comforting, I have been using mine up quite quickly.

a chalk drawing of a dalek saying recaffeinate outside a cafe

Always. And always with Dr Who reference. Thank you, Lonsdale St Roasters.

I went to the opening of an exhibition PULSE: reflections on the body last week at Canberra Museum and Gallery. I highly recommend it. Twenty-seven contemporary Australian artists are represented, and the public program involves performances, floor talks, and a seminar, and as you know I am jumping in by facilitating a writers workshop – Writing on the body on November 15, 12-5pm at CMAG. We will have some time to view the exhibition, and I will guide writers through exercises and games to respond to the exhibition and to discover and refine writing with/in/about/out of the body. I hope this will be the first of a series of guided writing workshops in response to exhibitions and collections at CMAG and around Canberra. Let’s see how this first one goes.

Write with a sense of the body. I have often offered this advice over my many years of creative writing teaching. This is not just about physical descriptions like hair colour or length or style, eye colour, height, or shape of your characters, but how they actually feel (or even not feel) in their bodies. The body is something we can all relate to, whatever our gender, culture, race, or other cultural definitions that accompany us, and if it is left out in crafting fiction or even poetry, something vital is most likely missing. I often find that this one piece of advice will lift a piece of writing to a new level, and often solve a number of other problems as well.

PULSE: Reflections on the body, is so rich, so stimulating, and so accessible. I really can’t do it justice in a little blog post. But I will engage with the exhibition in this space over the next weeks and invite anyone in town, nearby or passing through, to join my workshop, and more importantly, just go along and enjoy the exhibition. For the workshop book through the ACT Writers Centre, 02 6262 9191 or online https://app.formassembly.com/forms/view/10261

My haiku at the beginning of this post was inspired by Patricia Piccinini’s To fall under gravity, which I wondered over at the opening. This is the artist of Skywhale fame, and dear to many Canberrans’ hearts. In my first encounter with To fall under gravity it seems to me to be a series of floating nipples (or pimples) or they could even be air bubbles. They could be female or male nipples, and they are unassuming but also erotic, and quite plain, just ‘there’. Everyone I watched viewing it smiled, and some (like me) shoved their hands deeper in their pockets, resisting the urge to touch them. This exhibition actually affects your body. Of course it does. Can’t wait to be over this flu and cold (sniff)  and to get back to CMAG and Pulse. (I didn’t get the germ there, don’t worry! I got it at a dance class, or from my mum.)

ecard for Writing on the Body

 

Foot

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Medical models of two feet, one with veins and tendons on cross section, and the other a skeleton

Don’t you love medical models of body parts?

 

I long for foot massages, and beg my loved ones anytime we are sitting down together and relaxing, to please rub my feet, to please manipulate the joints and stretch the tendons. In general they kindly comply. I don’t think good feet run in my family (sorry for the pun). I have suffered a lot of pain over the last few years that has meant I have had to stand up a great deal, and now my feet are the sore points. I pore over pictures of foot anatomy and try to locate the exact points of trouble. They have been x-rayed, ultra sounded and injected, and they still hurt to blazes. Massaging can make them better, and can also make them worse, but it is a risk I’m happy to take as it is sheer bliss in the moment.

I have always considered my feet as a point of distinction, as I have two webbed toes on both feet, and whenever I am asked that ‘getting to know you question’ in a class, Is there anything special about you?, I always reveal  the duckiness of my toes. Do you remember those great scenes in Local Hero when the marine scientist, Marina, (played by Jenny Seagrove) randomly emerges from the bay in her wetsuit like a Venus, and then later when Oldsen massages her foot and discovers her webbed toes? (He is played by a young Peter Capaldi, the latest Dr Who incarnation.) Mermaid heritage, I have always believed.

Writing about ‘the body’ has always interested me. Creatively, I have found this preoccupation rich and engaging. It is somewhere we can connect, through our senses, through the rhythms of our flesh, our creatureliness, our pain, our sexuality, our being. It has become an area of research for me as well, the place of body in philosophy and how it is represented in literature. But more of that later.

I remembered a piece I wrote, Foot, that was published in Body lines: a women’s anthology edited by Jillian Bartlett and Cathy Joseph, published by Womens Redress Press in 1991, and thought it was time it got its socks off and came out for an airing. So here it is.

FOOT 

I hold a foot, freshly washed, with dirt ingrained in the whorls of its sole. The flesh of the toes is soft like fruit. I bite it and the skin is powdery and white, but smooth. The sensitive arch cringes, and I hold it firmly as the foot wrenches in the air, and we laugh. It is the foot of a city walker, a pattern of callous, ridges the shape of shoes.

But this foot is made for wandering over plains, for long stretches of earth, for hills. It is made for me to kiss and bite. The toes fit perfectly in my mouth. They only just fit shoes, and they make holes in socks.

I separate the metatarsals, the delicate long bones and ligaments. Remember your foot when you were a child I say, it was like a hand, flexible and playful. Feet at rest and relaxed, relaxes the whole body, and your mind. Toes, their strangely different lengths separate, and manipulated, are free and grasping. The fluid in the joints flow, they rotate.

* She bites my foot again and the pain is so beautiful I nearly kick her in the face and fall off the chair. I can’t stop laughing until she digs her nails in and then massages the sole. She says my feet are dirty even though I just washed them. I don’t care. Remember your foot when you were a child she says. She captures my foot like a fish, trying to slither away. *

I am the massage. My hands and the foot are covered in oil, like they’re ready to be cooked. She kicks the bottle of oil over and it sinks into the carpet. Heat and cold pass between skin. Soft skin, rough skin, the two parts, hand and foot, manipulator and runner. The foot of a dancer. The foot of a singer. Touches the ground, heel and side and each toe in turn. And again, hips swaying, stamp after stamp. I feel the dance in this captured foot. I feel them dangling from a tree, about to touch the ground. I twist it and she loves it.

The other foot is less sensitive and more stubborn, it avoids my teeth. Like grains of earth under the skin, I can feel grit in the sole, small painful pebbles on which she walks. I draw the toes out, pulling them till the joints separate gently. Run my knuckles over the sole, into it. I bend the foot back, and pull it forward. She is almost asleep. I release the foot, the reflection of the body. Her mind is still as I put it down. We rest our feet together, sole against sole.
………………………………………………..

It is good to imagine pain free feet! It is interesting to look back over your writing and to come to understand your preoccupations, what your work might be ‘about.’ “The body’ definitely is important to me.

There is an exhibition about ‘the body’, just opened at the Canberra Museum and Gallery, Pulse: Reflections on the Body. I am running a writing workshop on Saturday November 15 in the afternoon, where you can view the exhibition and write with me and in a group in response to the exhibition. If you are a local or nearby you are most welcome. It is being run in association with the ACT Writers Centre, and you book through them.

ecard for Writing on the Body

Writers Workshop: Writing on the body

with Sarah St Vincent Welch

12pm–5pm Saturday 15 November

Discover how developing a sense of ‘the body’ can take your writing to a new level. Explore the exhibition Pulse: Reflections on the body, at Canberra Museum and Gallery, through writing, with Sarah and a group of fellow writers. Be inspired by visual art and learn ways to bring your writing to life. This guided and immersive workshop caters for all forms, and will include writing exercises and games, time to view the exhibition, and time to write and discuss. Follow up material to encourage participants to continue writing will also be provided.

Sarah St Vincent Welch is a creative writing facilitator with over fifteen years of experience. She received a citation from the Australian Learning and Teaching Council for ‘devising playful writing spaces that surprise, stimulate and support creative writing students to write and keep writing.’ Her short fiction has been published and anthologised, and has won the Marjorie-Graber McInnes Short Story Award twice. She won the inaugural Marian Eldridge Award, and The Jessie Litchfield Award. Sarah is interested in leading a continuing guided writing workshop that responds to exhibitions and collections.

Venue: ACT Writers Centre workshop room
Code: All
Cost: $54 members, $48 concessional members, $84 non-members (includes 6 months of membership)
Bookings: You can book by phone on 6262 9191, online or at the office. Payment is required at time of booking.

The Birds

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I saw Hitchcock’s ‘The  Birds’  last weekend at the Electric Palace as part of their Vintage Electric season. It was great to see a Hitchcock classic screened; there is nothing like the full cinema experience, that dark communion with a cinema audience. I glanced across at the uplifted faces aglow with film light, laughed with them in some of the wrong places (sorry Alfred), and relished the frisson of collective terror.

This time around I particularly noticed the soundscape, the caws and flaps overlaying the urban environment in the opening sequence and the birdy mise-en-scene. The optical effects stood up quite well. I was damn scared of those birds. I was terrified. Again. I always wonder how that can be, when I know a film quite well, that the tension and fear and excitement still rise so surely.

I was fascinated by the resemblance of Melanie to Mrs Brenner and the exploration of  mothering and female relationships. Can a guy really only love someone like his mum? Always double- edged (as with any Hitchcock film). If you haven’t seen it I don’t want to reveal who gets pecked to death ( oh my gosh would that happen) but I was interested (apart from the avenging Nature) how carefully and peacefully relationships and desires were worked through. Ex girlfriend of male love interest could talk with potential new girlfriend of male love interest quite frankly, in fact put her up for the night and maybe even lend her a toothbrush. Women vying for maternal roles work it out together albeit motivated by the potential end of human supremacy in their environment. Veronica Cartwright’s (iconic sci fi horror actress) performance as the young Cathy Brenner was spellbinding. (Her sister, Angela Cartwright, plays Brigitta in the Sound of Music, and Penny in the TV show, Lost in Space.)

An added bonus for this viewing was the brief conversation I had with the people behind me about the impending magpie swooping season in Canberra where the poor fellers with enlarged testicles just want to peck your head off. Clack. Clack. For those coming to Floriade from interstate you will understand why the denizens of the City of Circles wear spiky bike helmets and hats with eyes on them. You see groups of schoolchildren running outside of their schools – you’d swear they were in a scene from The Birds.

I also spied a family dressed in 1950s splendour. The man wore a green suit with green hat. (I hope he took his hat off in the cinema as we all know men’s hats should not be worn inside) and the woman wore a pill box hat and long silken jacket. The girl was berugged in a stylish poncho ( maybe not so 50s but still looked great) and I believe patent leather shoes.  I wonder if this family live their lives like this or if they dressed up for the movies?

Anyway, if you haven’t seen The Birds get it out or download it. Even better see if you can find it screening somewhere.

I’m so looking forward to Electric Palaces screening of Alien, my all time make me feel better movie. I just love watching Ripley’s professionalism and work ethic as those around her fail. For those in Canberra it is on at 3 pm on 15th September. In weeks to come they are showing Singin’ in the Rain, North by North West, Rear Window,  Gone with the Wind and Breakfast at Tiffany’ s. I’ll be getting out my long cigarette holder. (I wonder if they’ll let me smoke inside. 😉 Probably not.)