THE PASSION OF JOAN OF ARC at the GLASGOW CATHEDRAL

This was the second time visiting the Glasgow Cathedral for me , the first time was during the day, the starting point for the Glasgow Slavery Walk Tour.This time was an evening visit to see one of the all time applauded silent films ever made.

It was fitting the film , with live beautifully haunting accompanying singing and full musical score from the enormous chloral organ with tubes seemingly as big as a double decker bus , was showing in a building which would have stood as the tallest established landmark at the time of the actual trials and tribulations of Joan of Arc herself.

The inside of the Cathedral has many weird seemingly incongruous features , from graves of previous benefactors ( including those that made fortunes from Jamaican tobacco plantations ) to tattered flags of Scottish Regiments in what is a very unsymmetrical layout that belies the exterior.

Inside there is a delicate , captivating delight for the eye to focus on no matter which height or direction you look , seeing an ever increasing intricate detail the closer you examine , the light from the stain glassed windows makes every vista a new fresh chromatic perspective that is never the same from one glance to the next.

The film was made less than a decade after Joan of Arc was made into a saint.The very choice of the director not being French made him and the commissioners of the project subject to vehement , tasteless, chauvanist and arrogant attacks from nationalist and cultural communities.For the director the project was aimed to see if the film format could capture emotion, Human intensity, and the ellusive spirituality that few art can as this review from The Guardian illustrates.  

"So extraordinary and otherworldly is this film's power, you could believe you were watching the actual trial of Joan of Arc, rather than just actors recreating it for the camera. The fact that it was based on the original transcripts of the trial could be a factor, but Danish director Carl Theodor Dreyer was not much concerned with historical accuracy (Joan had been canonised in 1920, seven years before this film was made). "The year of the event seemed as inessential to me as its distance from the present. I wanted to interpret a hymn to the triumph of the soul over life," he later wrote"

The verdict through the ages since has been that this film fulfilled all the ambitious briefs with astonishing success.It is easy for us in this age to forget that films that send us powerful spiritual emotional messages would not have done so until this work in particular showed it can be done , and more powerfully in this medium than any other for the time and effort expended by the viewer.



The film was made on a huge set , painted in deep pink to provide contrast with the sky for cameras of the time.The actors performed with no make-up so faces could show the full emotional canvas when shown , almost exclusively , in close shot where the full nuance of complexity of feelings shines through.

The film was banned in France , and the UK, by intervention of the Church in the former and the Military reputation in the latter , not surprising as one of the fiercest aspects that almost strangulate the viewer is the intense oppression of the crushing mass of accusers representing any State backed Dogmatic institution suppressing a captive individual at any given time and any given place.

It was thought the original film as intended to be shown by the director had been lost forever due to two fires.Even the much lauded film the World has been watching was constructed from  cuts put together from previously edited-out material that survived.In 1981 canisters containing original shots turned up in a Norwegian Mental Hospital.They were restored in 1985 to a version very close to one Dreyer would have intended the public to see.

In the case of Joan of Arc herself there has been much controversy as to why the King she had helped to Throne did not do enough to rescue or foster an exchange which seemed to be well within negotiating options.The cold,harsh political explanation would be he would not really want to have a highly influential hawkish member of the military chief-of-staff who claimed divine visions and a mandated mission from God for a perpetually expansive continuing endless military campaign.Even in her letter to the English before the capture of Orleans ( note Note:12) she stressed the long term goal was to take the war south and possibly to initiate yet another crusade against the Muslims once the Hussite Czechs had been forcibly converted or exterminated.This point is further validated when she wrote this letter to the Hussites in the few months of peace between the King and the English allies in which her turn to the Southern front is shown. ( take particular notice of note:3)

Having just established his Throne the priority would have been to stabilise and consolidate gains which would have been unimaginable only a few humiliating years ago.The presence of Joan of arc in his court would have been a liability to political settlements in the North , when her "inspired" presence may have encouraged more campaigns than all parties at the time had energy or resources for , especially if attention to on-going rivals in the North were diverted to a campaign in Czech Lands which would have brought the Poles and the Holy Roman Empire into a multi-frontal conflict.

The twist of History is that when the English burnt Joan of Arc at the stake they may also have burnt the chances of exterminating the Hussite Czechs and yet another ill-advised crusade against Muslims with her.

ALASDAIR GRAY : A LIFE IN PROGRESS at the GFT

This documentary was started many years ago and is no nearer to final completion than it would have been had the makers decided to make the best of the material they had on hand then to capture the life and work of Alasdair Gray.

Even the latest cut , which was being edited and worked on at 4 am the day of this showing , has only one glib , almost flippant , reference to the Independence vote coming in 2014 , in which he categorically states "Home Rule" as he likes to call the process will be a certainty , a comment that deserves some clarification and production of evidence as nearly all the polls being conducted seem to suggest the YES vote is over 10% behind the NO in all opinion polls.

The makers claim lack of financial backing for the project as to why we are still no nearer the final presentable cut , though one does wonder if their is also the artistic element of lack of grounding to which aspect of the multi-faceted Gray they want to explore rather than superficially voyeur a bare scratching of his many disciplines only to find they have penetrated beneath of the surface of none.

As the Q&A after screening suggested the documentary does not cover any of the critiques and analysis of Book both at home and abroad by other artists which Gray loves to discuss in depth with his colleagues and peers as pointed out by Bernard MacLaverty , another contributor in the session pointed out the non-existence of vast writings and discussions Gray has had about religion and the church within the universe of spirituality.

Having seen the documentary and heard the input of the audience it seems the best course of action for the makers would be to have a taut appraisal of one aspect of his expression in a deep and meaningful way , for example by far the best parts of the documentary were the scenes and close-ups of his Murals , it was the rare times you got to see Gray the artist at the art-face.

Gray is a brilliant Muralist , superb painter , gifted novelist , skilled publiciser , very good playwright , critic and a noteworthy poet.What he is not is the archetypal classical speaker of a nations voice that marks out a Yeats or a Gibran , or the embarrassing comparisons to being a Scottish Leonardo Di Vinci which should make all parties cringe.The one weakness in Gray "the myth" is that he does not have the finger on the pulse of the nation , this can be read as either him being way ahead of his time , or it being questionable if his watch is in good working order , i go with the broken watch theory.In the matter of art this is an asset , to breath and work to a completely different aesthetic wave is the spice of stimulus , but to be the voice of a nation one needs to be a paradox of an artist that is grounded and rooted as well as uplifted and aspiring.It is something the great Celtic Artists can do , but Gray , despite his variety of expression cannot do to a deep level.The same goes for Nationalism as expressed by the Celtic Peoples which is a healthy embracing of others nationalism which genuinely strives to have local decisions made locally by those accountable to the constituency they live in , unlike the superiority nationalism we see in the continent.

To illustrate the point , Grays wading into the nationalist question has had the effect of those in favour of independence seeing his "input" as somewhat of a liability , whereas those that wish to retain the union can quote him copiously as the frankenstein nightmare of what an independent Scotland could become.What for an artist can be a welcome trait , can for an advocate in the political realm be a blunder of catastrophic unwise proportions.

For example the Scotsman Newspaper had this take on his bizarre and misplaced attack on non-Scots "colonialists" taking over the arts.An ironic piece of lack of sense as the very organisation he attacks has only this year re-claimed Macbeth in a fantastic production that has been a smash in Broadway and plans to stage a major production of Hoggs "Confessions of a Justified Sinner" in the summer.

This irresponsible piece from someone who should have known better compelled the much lauded and universally appreciated director of  The Scottish National Theatre to defend herself on the grounds of "race".The flurry of comments shows how much heat rather than light was generated.

This prompted a polemical debate in the Bella Caledonia Magazine in which the reply in the rebuttal comments section by the brilliant Scottish Actor Tam Dean Burns deserves to be published in full.

"Ok I’ve read Alasdair’s essay several times now. I really wish Scott Hames and Word Power had made it available so that everyone could make a considered opinion of it and its sentiments. But I have to say first off that I really don’t think the smear accusations hold much water. Yes, the headline and subheadline are wrong and deserve criticism but could easily have been the work of a sub-editor. The article quotes selectively, sure, but it contains the substance of what the essay is arguing and does not misquote. To make out that Scotsman Publications has “stepped over a line” and deserves boycotting is just silly. And to refer to the journalist Peterkin as ” self loathing” and such like smacks of the Zionist propaganda machine that Alasdair refers to in regard to anti-semiticism.I have criticised Kevin for adopting Alastair Campbell style tactics, also employed in regards to Macalpine ie try to divert the story to being about shooting the messenger – in those cases the BBC, in this Scotland On Sunday.
At last, Kevin and Michael admit that the terms used by Gray are generally best avoided. Settlers and Colonists are terms asking for trouble and its ridiculous to howl now when they find it. As far as I can see there is no fundamental difference between the quotes in Peterkin’s article and the essay.
I’m only going to make a point or two more because I’m being picked up to appear on Scotland Tonight about this shortly but I take offence at Kevin stating that’s my “reward” for joining the Unionist camp. I mean really- get a fucking grip Kev.
I don’t need to come to the defence of Vicky Featherstone. She has spoken brilliantly for herself. All I’ll say for the benefit of those who comment here is that the vast majority of voices heard in National Theatre of Scotland productions have been working class Scots.
But I take offence at the smearing of Giles Havergal as a colonist who, one can only presume in the way the essay is constructed is being accused of being not a great Artistic Director of a theatre of world renown- the Glasgow Citizens’ – but an example of “arts administrators (who) were invited to Scotland by the Scots, stayed longer but were still colonists, not because they eventually retired to England or were promoted to other jobs there, but because their work for institutions originally created to encourage art in Scotland actually depressed it.”
Giles Havergal used to stand at the front door welcoming the audience in every night and Glasgow and Scotland should be totally proud of what was achieved there. And as for merely two plays, even that’s not true- what about Trainspotting, Filth, The Cutting Room, two of which I was in? I think if you look at the records you’ll also find only a handful of Shakespeare’s. the Citz had its own unique take on theatre and that should be celebrated rather than nit-picked at here. This is not behaving as if in the early days of a better nation but grumping and moaning in the hangover of a referendum defeat brought about by such stupid own goals. Thank crivvens almost all comments I’ve read have wanted nothing to do with any desire to lump folk into settler or colonist camps. Like I said with the Open Letter to Laurie Sansom ( must be wondering what he’s let himself in for! ) there is a debate to be had about directors in Scottish theatre and that may well extend to other spheres, but I’m afraid that so far, this has not been that debate.
And finally, never mind the bloody Abbey, Scottish playwrights are punching well above their weight and have been for some time!"

So much for any weak points about Gray the national voice , Gray the artist is a supreme talent and deserves the last word in a medium in which he is a master, in this link you can see him talking in depth about his Novel "Lanark" and its impact since publication.

You can see most of the documentary on youtube ( notice how many years since it went up).

THE DAY THAT LASTED 21 YEARS ( O DIA QUE DOURO 21 ANOS) at the GFT

A very under-reported tragic though not  unsurprising episode is the shady black manoeuvrings of the Kennedy Presidency in denying the stable flow of progressive democracy in the domestic politics of South Americas largest country, Brazil.We hear about Kissinger and Nixon in the brutal context of Allende and Chile , but why not so much about Kennedy and Johnson in Brazil a decade earlier, in what , geopolitically , was the prime piece in the domino effect that ushered in a dark age for the South American continent.One possible , and sadly highly plausible , reason could be we do not have spectacular TV footage of US made airplanes blasting a parliament house , thereby giving an iconic image to act as a focal point ,quite literally providing visual ammunition to which to hang around a blatant  campaign of  suppression.

This documentary goes a long way in setting the record straight and helping to rehabilitate the real aspirations and social programmes of well-meaning democratically mandated civilian governments that have had to have their reputations dug out from the six foot deep soiling.Collateral casualties of the Cold war game played by US foreign policy in what was a war to retain an absolute "economic interest" facet premised on the continuation of the Monrovian Doctrine.

As this very thoughtful and well researched review from The Variety states.

"The March 1964 coup that overthrew Brazil's popularly elected President Joao Goulart ushered in 21 years of military dictatorship and with it a prolonged period of suffering marked by disappearances and torture. Tavares goes back to 1961, when Goulart, as vice president, made a feather-ruffling state visit to Mao's China four months after the Bay of Pigs debacle. U.S. concerns about Brazil's leftward political shift came to a head when Goulart (popularly nicknamed Jango) became president in 1963, prompting Ambassador Lincoln Gordon to spearhead a CIA-backed covert campaign to bring the government down. (Gordon's assistant Robert Bentley is among those interviewed here, and his supercilious, disingenuous attitude does the State Department no favors.)
Gordon argued that if Brazil became communist, the country wouldn't be another Cuba, but rather another China. U.S. economic interests were too great to let that happen, and through various fronts, the CIA began to channel enormous sums of money into funding anti-Goulart candidates and planting false articles in the Brazilian press. When Lyndon B. Johnson became president, he continued his predecessor's policies, signing off on a campaign to secretly bring together dissident elements in the Brazilian army in order to topple Goulart's administration"

The problem for the US was not that the Goulart Government was communist , it was not , but that it was about to commit the "capital" offence of taxing Foreign multi-national companies and re-invest in poverty reduction projects and domestic infrastructural programmes.Goulart was a rare example of the Brazilian "white" elite showing genuine concern for the dis-enfranchised blacks , a process that today has black workers earning only half the income of non-blacks, so rare that he was the only one who was a member of " The main leader of his Carnival block Comigo Ninguém Pode, mãe-de-santo Jorgina Vieira, declared in an interview to the newspaper Zero Hora that Jango was one of the only white boys of São Borja to be a member of the block. In a particular Carnival celebration in the 1940s, he broke the high society rules and led the block inside the aristocratic Clube Comercial, which would not allow blacks in their halls until the late 1960s."

Goulart was also instrumental in overseeing the creation of a minimum wage in 1953 , nearly half a century before the UK established one.His reforms , which provoked the ire of the US and led to this  sustained, coordinated campaign of overthrow another democracy, were minor as far as full blown communist style nationalisation is concerned , hardly the stuff of Brazil going over to the Soviet Block or anywhere near it.



This article gives a good synopsis of the attitude of todays Brazil to that time  , a time from which only one person has been convicted of wrong-doing , and that only in a symbolic sentence , and there has been no satisfactory investigation along the lines of a truth and reconciliation  commission which means many of the Families of those that were killed, tortured or disappeared have never been able to find the bodies of their loved ones , yet alone to lay them in to rest.

"The Court of Human Rights of the Organization of American States (OAS) recognized the importance of identifying and punishing the torturers of the military dictatorship, ruling that the maintenance of the Amnesty Law hurts international agreements signed by Brazil. But unfortunately, the Brazilian government keeps ignoring the decision.
[...]
The torture is institutionalized in this country because you can not punish torture after having pardoned the biggest torturers in our history and not even identify them."

The irony of the situation is that the current President of Brazil was tortured during those military days , and though she is now the Commander-In-Chief of the Armed Forces she is unable to bring any closure to bear to the the amnesties enshrined  in the constitution drawn up by the last dictator a constitution to which parliament and offices of state are beholden.

MEN AT LUNCH at the GFT

My legs were dizzy throughout the documentary , there is an urban myth that has turned into an accepted fact that this iconic photograph is a photoshoped fake.The first real question the documentary affirmatively answer the photograph is genuine.Thereafter all the stories and claims are up for grabs , which adds to the mystery of the photo and the people behind it.More important than the actual identity of the characters is the story behind the situation of how they got to where they where , 800 ft above the Manhattan Skyline without any support harnesses eating lunch during a break from building the centre-piece of the Rockefeller Centre now famously known as 30-Rock.

The whole episode speaks of the New Deal and what is was supposed to achieve , and for whom.



This piece from the Irish Times gives a decent description of the story told in the film

"Seán Ó Cualáin does an excellent job of grouping together a potted study of the immigrant experience with an examination of the photograph’s history and an analysis of the various Irish connections."

Immediately noticeable is the non-presence of any African-Americans or Latinos , one of the shameful episodes of the early Trade Union Movements in the UK , South Africa ( where Robert Tressell of the "ragged trousered philanthropists" fame came from) and the US  was the severe anti-Irish in the case of the UK and virulent anti-Black in the case of the later two stance they took to protecting whites from having their jobs taken by blacks.Robert Tressells only known trade union activity is the organising of strikes to prevent blacks taking white only jobs and in the US even respected "socialists" like Jack London were hostile to blacks taking over roles of the whites.This article also points out the role played in creating the New York skyline by the Naive-Americans. 

"Many of today’s ironworkers say that poster versions of the photo hang in their homes, and in the homes of ironworker relatives. One of these men says that he comes from a long line of Irish and “Newfies.”
Montrealers know that many local Mohawks helped to build New York, and other U.S. cities, too. There’s some information about them on a web page of The Smithsonian Institution.
Germans, Scandinavians and Irish did this work, as well. (We don’t see any black or Asian faces in any of the photographs, presumably because of discrimination back then.)"

The above mentioned article referring to the contribution of the Mohawk Indians is in this link.

“A lot of people think Mohawks aren’t afraid of heights; that’s not true. We have as much fear as the next guy. The difference is that we deal with it better. We also have the experience of the old timers to follow and the responsibility to lead the younger guys. There’s pride in ‘walking iron.’” —Kyle Karonhiaktatie Beauvais (Mohawk, Kahnawake)"

One of the observances of the film that stand out in the mind is that these men were more important at their precarious perch 60-odd stories high without any safety aids  , for the contrived image the employers wanted to portray of the building work and the morale of the workforce, than they would ever be when they got back to ground level to become a mass of replaceable nobodys , which it is why it is somewhat befitting that we do not really know their names , only their shared story and what it means to their age and ours about what the individual Human is worth.

A case in point to how much the men who made Manhattan were really work to the owners who build the buildings in encased in the story of the mural designed by Diego Rivera which would have honoured then in stone , the mural was never allowed to be scene by the public and eventually destroyed as it represented to much of the potential champions of these men.To this end this article records the background of the failure of the only real tribute in stone that would have recognised the men on the beam in a way they would have liked to be remembered. 

Notable in this exchange of letters between Rivera and Rockefeller is the compromise suggestion by Rivera which was not taken up.

"I should like, as far as possible, to find an acceptable solution to the problem you raise, and suggest that I could change the sector which shows society people playing bridge and dancing, and put in its place, in perfect balance with the Lenin portion, a figure of some great American historical leader, such as Lincoln, who symbolizes the unification of the country and the abolition of slavery, surrounded by John Brown, Nat Turner, William Lloyd Garrison or Wendell Phillips and Harriet Beecher Stowe, and perhaps some scientific figure like McCormick, inventor of the McCormick reaper, which aided in the victory of the antislavery forces by providing sufficient wheat to sustain the Northern armies.

I am sure that the solution I propose will entirely clarify the historical meaning of the figure of leader as represented by Lenin and Lincoln, and no one will be able to object to them without objecting to the most fundamental feelings of human love and solidarity and the constructive social force represented by such men. Also it will clarify the general meaning of the painting."

IN SEARCH OF BLIND JOE DEATH : THE JOHN FAHEY STORY at the GLAD CAFE

The Glad Cafe is a unique and highly valued venue on the south side of Glasgow , a hub for poets,philosophers and musicians.A superb modern venue that will go a long way to providing space and state of the art equipment and performance spaces to a new aspiring generation of local and national artists.According to its website:

 The Glad Cafe is a cafe/venue in the southside of Glasgow, the heart of Scotland’s most ethnically diverse community. We provide a warm hub where freshly prepared seasonal food is created by our chefs during the day, a variety of sharing plates are available in the evening, and delicious home baking can be consumed at all times!

We have a well equipped venue which is home for creative music of many kinds – indie, electronic, traditional, world... We aim to provide a showcase space for up and coming musicians as well as for more established acts. Our cafe and venue space will also be used for a variety of different arts based events – exhibitions, film, poetry readings...

The Glad Cafe is a social enterprise with the legal structure of Community Interest Company. As a social enterprise we have a social purpose to eventually plough profits, (once loans have been repaid), into affordable music lessons for local people.

John Fahey is a respected and honoured figure in the guitar playing and appreciation world.He is also an inspirational figure for many generations of musicians from the 50s to the present day , if anything his influence should grow bigger as his , arguably , later work in the 90s with electric guitar becomes an inspiration for what hopefully will be a renaissance of musical poetry in the audio form , a language instantly intelligible and universally understood in our cross-cultural communication age.As with most music of our times Fahey hunted down the great tunes and artists of the Southern Blues , Delta Blues , New Orleans Jazz and Bluegrass , fused in into his own subsuming language of wooded glades and flowing streams and brought the whole into the mainstream conciousness , and them developed and innovated it for the rest of his career upto the 90s.

In the website in tribute to his memory we have the following statement.

"Fahey is known as "the father of American Primitive Guitar." Some think of him as a foundational figure in American folk music. Fahey himself, however, insisted "I am not a volk, how can I be a volk? I'm from the suburbs." All jesting aside, Fahey, as both musician and musicologist, made a fundamental contribution to the global understanding of classical American musics such as Delta blues, Appalachian bluegrass and New Orleans jazz.

Fahey's own music stretches the boundaries of past musical traditions, creating a complex musical dialogue primarily with his steel stringed solo guitar. Fahey transcended his essential Delta influences combining bluegrass, Brazilian, classical, Indian, New Orleans, musique concrète, and gothic industrial ambience."

 The website also charts his considerable written work and his nature loving outlook which is close to the relationship with land and place that the native american indians would have expoused only a few generations before him.

Funding for the project did not come easy , the director and producer James Cullingham deserves great credit for the sterling work and thoughtful dedication to the project , amply demonstrated with him coming to the festival screening to give an introduction and Q&A  after the showing.

 In the end the money was mainly raised by a host of individuals giving generous small donations so that a fitting document of this talent could be saved for future audience.In this link we learn more about the director and his valuable work in restoring the places of neglected musicians and vital missing-links in the sounds we enjoy today

Here is a full concert from the time ( late 90s) that Fahey was producing the best intense guitar work that appeals to me.Notice the deep south delta feel to the melodies.



The most invigorating evening was rounded of with a beautifully touching ,haunting and intimate set from Alasdair Roberts , which including the this lovely melodic piece.

PABLO'S WINTER at the GFT

This documentary film has a sound scottish base , with collaboration and funding from the Scottish Documentary Institute and Napier University.The story is told by Spanish filmmakers and technical team telling the story from the best source , the People on the ground itself.They tell their tale in their language , their perspective and in their own time.

The film is made on the border of La Mancha and Andalucia in the ancient mercury mining centre of Almaden , a place that has been operating since the time of Christ , until it closed in the opening of this century due to the collapse in the price of the raw material.
 

"Pablo represents the last generation of Almadén mercury miners, an age old profession with over 2000 years of history. Through a straightforward depiction of life’s everyday moments, Pablo’s Winter explores the decay of the local mining culture, but above all, pays homage to its real protagonists: the miners and their families."

This dedicated website for the film tells the inside story of Pablo and his generation , largely neglected in Spain of today in terms of appreciation and welfare.

"Pablo's Winter is the story of a retired mercury miner trying to stop smoking, with the end of the mining culture as an important backdrop. These miners and their families have been widely underrepresented. Therefore, with this film we aim to make justice to the essential role that the mercury miners have had in the history of this town.
Pablo, a chain smoker retired miner is always sitting down at his living room table. When Pablo visits the doctor, we find out that he has suffered five heart attacks. The doctor urges the miner to stop smoking. Pablo shrugs and buys 40 packets of fags in his way home..."

A touchingly revealing scene in the film is one of the few times we find Pablo animated with the passion and vigour of youth as he looks back on a newspaper scrapbook of a 11 day and night occupation of the mine he and his colleagues engaged in at the same time as the UK Miners strike as market forces in the world order of the day.Alas , the mine was saved but not for long , ending a 2000 year history from the times of the Romans , Islamic Spain , German Occupation , Franco and then its demise under Aznars watch.

Below is a trailer for the film.

SIMON MUNNERY - FYLM MAKKER

Simon Munnery is a treat to be enjoyed on rare occasions , like once in your life.

This review from the Skinny gives a fair synopsis of the act.Though the highly optimistic contention that it will leave one howling with laughter could only be attributed to a werewolf to be honest.

Munnery is the Alan Turing of comedy. No matter how smart you think he is, you're still grossly underestimating his intelligence. Fylm-Makker is yet another revolutionary idea, tossed off casually as if this kind of thing happens every day.
The conceit is that Munnery is not on the stage but in a booth located amongst the crowd. The booth has two cameras: one projecting his face onto a 12-foot screen onstage, the other points to a desk where he uses bits of cardboard to produce live animations. Yes, clearly a work of avant-garde genius. Munnery talks us through it with the awe and wonder of someone showing you an app they've just downloaded. Imagine what it'd be like to have to live with him.

The jokes were at best puns befitting a giggles infested crowd in an art school canteen who would quite frankly laugh as much if they were sitting oblivious to each other titteringly scouring the latest facebook or text jokes about random news event of the hour.

This review cautions the reader to the pitfalls and dangers of grossly overusing the word genius , then goes onto to grossly overuse it in a way that invites comedic parody of how well sarcasm can be deployed as gushing praise. .The comment does capture a realistic audience take on the show.

And that goes some way to describe Munnerys humour, are you watching a shite comedian , or are you watching a brilliant comedian pretending to be shite.Munnerys slapdash and superficial style does not permeate , in the manner of Stewart Lee ( who is a massive fan of Munnery) , the boundary which challenges the audience to think deeper about the things they casually laugh about when they know nothing of the depth of the subject or the level of research that is required before you even joke about something in a serious manner ( thus the whole ethos of comedians like Lee), for Munnery this show falls back on its shallowness without getting the audience to have an internalised discussion about the issues they have just , in the case of Munnery , briefly chuckled about.

The video below contains the best joke in the whole set ( which is good to know that even a genius can bring up a five year joke in the best of old-ones-are-the-best tradition)

THE CITY - AARON COPLAND LEWIS MUMFORD -1939

"The City" was made for the New York World Fair in 1939, this is the first set of performances of the Film with full live accompanying musical orchestra anywhere in Europe.As this article relates the music may not have been performed even in the US after the exhibition closed.

Performing the Copland score alongside a showing of the film, Auricle Ensemble are letting modern audiences hear the music live for the first time outside the USA. ‘You expect all of his music to be done by everyone,’ says music director Chris Swaffer. ‘The publishers have really helped us to be certain that it hasn’t been performed elsewhere before us.’ The downside of finding a rarely performed gem like this is that the instrumental parts are not exactly in pristine condition. ‘It was quite hard to access the parts,’ says Swaffer, ‘which were in the state they were left in when the film was first made, and we needed special permission to get hold of them. They took some reassembling.’ Now, however, the parts are restored and ready for other groups to perform.

As the above quote suggests the Auricle not only accessed the work of Copland so that we can enjoy it in its full glory , they also had to piece together the scraps they found like unravelling an ancient script , recoding it together to produce the original.The re-discovery of the piece is of great art historical benefit as it introduces the geneses of the process which at the time Copland was looking to make music accessible for the common masses , a journey that would lead to his most appreciated popular work "theme for the common man".Key elements of the leitmotiv that would be present in the "common man" are already making their first appearances in subtle nuances in this restored score.The musical score was one of the first made for a film , in that the score had to follow the documentary narrative , by Copland who went to to make scores for films such as "Of Mice and Men" , the adaptation of Steinbecks book for screen.The LA Times has rightly described the score as ‘an astonishing missing link not only in the genesis of Copland’s Americana style but in American music and cinema’.

The accompanying commentary was by the legendary multi-disciplined Lewis Mumford , who later wrote the extraordinary encyclopedic "City in History".

Mumford was a polymath , bringing his extensive absorption of many fields into a vision for the role of the city ,which at the time of this film was a hotly debated topic during the New Deal debate on what investments should be made in which direction for the future development of America , which are slowly being learned after a long winding, sometimes catastrophically reckless , journey.he was a disciple of Scottish Philosopher Patrick Geddes., who advocated that cities should be holistic environments that looks after the peace and well-being of the citizens , not just a path of least distance between citizen and factory , with no sense of community development in between.

A combination of market capitalism , allied with a one-size-fits-all classless communism crystallised at the time this view of Mumford was being articulated as an alternative vision for "community" cities , leading to the building of what are universally accepted as soulless mass housing blocks with the adequate provision of parks,recreation, leisure and community centres which were easy to make , cheap to build.Glasgow is a prime example of such urban disasters such as Sighthill and the infamous peripheral  housing "schemes" that had to be torn down within a calamitous generation , to be replaced by a more delicate , thought-out, urban renewal of mixed housing with a variety of social facilities more in keeping with Mumfords original vision.

You can see the whole Film in the link below.



Though a better vision than the ones that were inflicted post-war.Mumfords vision does have some fundamental flaws.One is the very accommodating attitude to cars and their benefit in the system , one reason why Ford would have been more than happy to finance the film project, and all the politics of environment and oil procurement that this policy entails.The other is an attitude to Woman that came be said to be somewhat patronising to say the least.And the sinister absence of any blacks in this grand new vision , which , sadly , says a lot about Roosevelt and the New Deal.

WHITE ELEPHANT ( ELEFANTE BLANCO) at the CINEWORLD

The best course for the  Church would be to re-position its ethos as the champion of poverty alleviation the world over.This film goes a long way into delving into the kind of viable scenario this vital process which only a re-galvanised Church rich in the heritage of Liberation Theology can take as it still holds a unique bridging role with its relations to all sectors of society.

For various historical reasons Argentinian Cinema has been at the cusp of the forefront to open new avenues of artistically  expressed genuine social debate , crossing all sectors of the community , in the Spanish speaking World.

This film takes of a semblance of responsibility to marry up the two strands of engagement to being a focal point of articulating the aspirations of the People into a mainstream stimulus for a society wide discussion in the Spanish World , no less including Spain itself , to economic growth and wealth distribution that the corporate funded political sphere have no appetite to engage.




In this Guardian article the reviewer fails to perceive a very vital shift in which we have a rare voice of direct criticism of current economic and social policies in real time , not the usual devices and metaphors normally deployed such as dream sequences of a fuzzy past , near gothic foggy scenes of a shadow parallel universe or flights of "Franco Aesthetics" only the most sophisticated monitors of the medium would gleam from the subtle surface fabric.The ground-breaking approach of tackling current issues in the present tense is an admirably audacious and worthy stance that requires heartfelt appreciation.

The Church in South America is at a crossroads from which it can traverse either of two courses , one is sadly the path it did traverse in the 20th century ( mostly at the prompting of European influence) of becoming the State Religion for Hire par excellence for ruling colonials , colonels and entrenched elites , corporate economics.The other path no open and ready to traverse if the will is there is to become a genuine player in championing the rights of the poor from a position of being able to argue and influence its corner from a stable foothold in the centre of politics , using the role carved out by liberation theology to the next level by lobbying to cement economic policies that not only allow the Church to merely minister to the poor , but make it a mission to take the poor out of economic exile into a middle-class existence, thereby strengthening the Churches own position by increasing a new neo-middle class (the only class , according to astute historians, that can effect and affect revolutions) that is loyal to the ethos of the Church by virtue of being championed by them formally.

Alas a major weakness of the film is the weak role ( so much so she is not even mentioned in the guardian review) given to what should have been a strong , independent three-dimensional character in the work,  Matina Gusman , who has great difficulty in getting through the film with her cloths on , and body parts not to be in the hands of inappropriate persons , quite an achievement for someone co-starring with two priests.

It would do credit to future films by this otherwise profound cabal if the role of the Woman is naked only in the substance and the depth of her character and not her body parts.It is disappointing the best role that can be found for a Woman is a present social commentary is the old , chauvanist one of being a temptress for a Priest on a noble cause.

If they can keep their Woman clad and the men diligent Argentinian Cinema could provide the inspiration for which we all can be infinitely grateful , within the Spanish World and Without.

A TALE OF TWO SYRIAS at the GFT

This was the first public showing of the documentary by Yasmin Fedda , who managed , being a Lebanese citizen ( a place recognised by Syria as part of Greater Syria , including the revered Lebanese national poet Kahlil Gibran , who never mentioned the word Lebanon when writing his nationalist odes , only his beloved Syria) to gain access to film within the Assad regime just before the revolution started.

Glasgow was a befitting venue for this World Premiere as Yasmin gained her Phd and funding for a large part of this project from Edinburgh University here in Scotland.

The website for the films producers tells us "A Tale Of Two Syrias is a snapshot of life before Syria’s uprising began, seen through the eyes of two people; Salem, an Iraqi refugee and fashion designer in Damascus and Botrus, a monk in the remote hillside monastery of Mar Musa. This film is about their
dreams, discussions, and questions around freedom and choice in the year before Syria
descended into serious conflict."

"Generousity is a political act" is one quote from a protagonists in the film, giving a profound indication that religion , especially in Syria, is a force for good that can lead the ideological weight to encourage the main thrust for justice , equality and poverty alleviation in a deeply religious society fighting a modern day repressive regime.

Another noteworthy scene in the film is when there is a debate inside the monastery with with a mixed gender and age group.Some of the younger ones talk about progress and freedom in a manner which follows the Western ideal they have seen in films and media , almost to the point they can only express themselves in a Western language on themes of self-expression and innate values , hope comes from the priest and some other wiser heads of the young who intuitively realise that genuine freedom can only come if it is a self-engendered Syrian Freedom that comes from the heritage and historical experience from Syria itself , not simply imitating a model from an alien source with differing historical roots.

One important revolutionary aspect Fedda was keen to relate in the Q&A session after the screening was the advanced role of Woman and how their voice is heard and respected at all levels of debate on the present and the future.

Despite the newness of the film one very decent review has already come out , you can see it in this link. 

"Through these glimpses into two very different lives, Fedda illustrates a nation built from interwoven narratives that defy the simple categorisations placed on it by outside observers. The hopes, needs and emotional depth of her subjects remind us how many more stories there are still to be told. They will make your heart break over the country's current suffering but inspire you with hope for its future. Though we see hints of the brutality to come, we also see landscapes of breathtaking beauty, and the score, largely composed of traditional songs, is full of yearning."

One of the most powerful weapons in shaping Syria post and pre-revolution is the traditional unsurpassed role of the Poet as the articulater of the national voice of yearning and call to action.

This Al-Jazeera programme in the series "Poets of Protest" features the Syrian Poet Hala Mohammed:

Renowned and outspoken Syrian poet Hala Mohammad explains how she thinks poetry is central to the political change under way in the Middle East.

You can see more work from Yasmin Fedda in this link of her previous projects.

NO at the GFT

"This movie is also about the economic system, and when you abuse this system. My country is owned by eight or 10 guys. The NO option won, but the YES option stayed."

---  Pablo Larraín

The director in the above quote taken from this  interview calls it about right.The movie leaves an uneasy aftertaste of a group of People who done quite well under Pinochet getting rid of a stale past sell-by date figure-head rather than a mass movement revolution from the grassroots up disposing of a despised torturing dictator.The feeling you get is close to that of Middle England in the late-80s , early 90s removing Thatcher whilst happily retaining Thatcherism.One has to recall the Hero of the Film , a composite loosely based on Eugenio Garcia , is an ace advertising executive at the same time that Saatchi & Saatchi were the avant-garde entrepreneurial champions of corporate capitalism , rather like the Zuckerberg of Today.To this end it is difficult to know where facts end and fiction starts , or how to see if any lessons of the Chile experience can seriously be applied to removing dictators and unjust systems today.

For example , it stretched credulity to know that a successful mainstream advertising executive would be living with a partner that is being serially arrested for anti-government protests. According to an article in the NY Times that deals with reaction to the film in Chile itself “No” is loosely based on “The Plebiscite,” a play written by Antonio Skármeta, a Chilean who is also the author of the novel that was made into the Oscar-winning film"Il Postino."He invented the René Saavedra character, but his Saavedra is very different from Mr. Larrain’s: 50ish, politically engaged, idealistic and happily married rather than 30ish, indifferent to politics, careerist and separated."

Then we have an anomaly of whether there was funding , and to what extent , by US agencies for the NO Campaign.This is an important element that the film does not touch upon any any great detail in that a continuum of a US Administration that at around that time was seriously and openly interfering with popular aspirations  that went against its economic and long-term strategic goals in Nicaragua , Colombia and Grenada in staunch defence of its Monrovian Doctrine would not be funding a campaign whose result would seriously tarnish its goals.Nor does the film delve into how much the insistence that NO campaign have 15 minute broadcasts along with the YES campaign was a dictate from the State department that Pinochet could not refuse.

It is important to recognise what was at stake in the 1988 , an article entitled "Authoritarianism Defeated By Its Own Rules " states:

   The turning point for the opposition had come in 1987, when key leaders concluded that their only hope to defeat the military was to beat it at its own game. Opposition leaders accepted the reality, if not the legitimacy, of constitutional provisions they despised by agreeing to register their followers in the electoral rolls set up by the junta, legalize political parties according to the regime's own prescriptions, and prepare to participate fully in a plebiscite they viewed as undemocratic.

And there are the reasons the US was not averse to the NO Campaign having a plausible chance to succeed , the Chicago Consensus economic was immersed and stable , the Constitution was in place , having been signed up by those wanting to contest democractic elections , to reduce flexibility of any party programme that deviated from the economic parameters in place.This meant the stakes for the referendum were not strategically high risk for the ruling elites or the US Foreign Policy for the region.All that was at issue was if Pinochet would rule for a term as President for the tenure of the already constitutionally agreed parliament.If anything US facilitation of a universally agreed embarrassing , dispensable  dictator (who had already done the job of persecuting communists to such an extent that re-emergence as a force outwith constitutional process was not a factor) without losing grip on the genuine centre of Powers could be positive propaganda with critics abroad and Human Rights advocates at home in what could turn out to be a Media Populist Humanitarian Intervention which could also serve as a reminder for the rest of the nations in the region of a tension-friendly path to acceptance of US Interests as opposed to the reaction if you go down the route of Nicaragua.Even for Pinochet the lose of the referendum , though not expected when the campaign began , would give him a plan B option to continue to rule as the Head of the Military , a place of Sovereignty from which neither Pinochet or the US would brook no equals.

The video below shows one of the actual NO campaign 15 minute broadcasts , notice the slick image-making that shows a lot of US marketing style influence:



This brings us to the reaction of the Chileans to this episode, the comment from Pablo Factvm encapsulates a general deep seated trend.

This quote from a highly informative , quality piece of journalism from the NY Times tells us:

 “No” has also been criticized for what it leaves out. The numerous books and academic theses that have been written on the plebiscite over the last quarter-century uniformly credit the anti-Pinochet forces’ grass-roots effort to register 7.5 million Chileans as pivotal to their success at the polls, but that is a subject that Mr. Larraín does not address.

A Poll Watcher during that referendum , now a directer of Human Rights Watch tacitly states about that unique and genuinely superhuman drive done by the very grassroots that have gained least in the new Chile:

 “The campaign for the No contained a huge component that was the electoral registry,” Mr. Vivanco said in a telephone interview from Washington. Voters “had to be educated about participating in a process that was perceived by many as not legitimate. How do you persuade people to take this seriously” when many were convinced that the Pinochet side “will engage in fraud, will use me, will never allow themselves to lose?”

This article pays due regard to that monumental grassroots registration effort which brought over seven and half million into the voting process , strangely only over half of them voted for NO whilst 45% voted for continuation of Pinochet , giving him confidence to dig in his heels and play hardball to gain a host of concessions and dispensations for himself and the elites.

Below is a video of an Amnesty International interview with Gael Garcia Bernal and Eugenio Garcia ( the real life character who the lead role is based on).



The oft-quoted NY Times article is worth reading as it also touches upon Chileans of all aspects and classes in the campaign concerns of the  Films nature , motivation and the message the film may misleadingly portray to the world looking for inspiration about over-throwing dictators.

I WISH at the GFT

A naturally acted ( by real life brothers who are part of a comedy duo ) story investigates the nuances of Family Life in todays Japan.

It is worth noting how the three generations portrayed handle the challenges presented.The Older Generation have close compact relationships and find an embracing opportunity when new technology ( in this case a high speed supertrain ) comes into their environment.Their established ,coherent , traditional ways of coming to an effective yet pro-active accommodation , as they have with the proximity of a nearby volcano over many generations are given a metaphor in the grandfathers wish to make a traditional cake to mark the coming of the train.Alas , one of the ingredients he used ( granulated sugar , instead of traditional sugar made in the locality ) somewhat weakens the cake , making it lose its fragrance and sweetness and become "soft" in flavour.

Whilst the older generation is tackling the challenges with an enthusiastic ,admirable , diligence the post -war generation ( the boys separated Mother and Father) are an unstable , disorientated , shambolic antithesis even as the Boys determine it will take a wishful miracle to stabilise   a  Family Life they have every right to regard as a Normal Right , a right that the Boys grandparents admirably provide given circumstances of distant absence of the Boys staying separately with each parent.When push comes to shove the best the middle generation can give is to go deeper into their position of self-absorbed selfishness.



This Guardian review gives a decent synopsis of the film in which the Boys go on a journey aided and abetted by their  Grandparents and also another set of willing helpers from the Older Generation who become the heroes of passing the right of continuity to the Children which the generation of Japanese most influenced by external consumerists  values  are completely unable to.

In the end the Boys make their own wishes , and decide they will chart another , their own, course from a situation that needs a major change of compass.