Peter Strickland

Hans Hillmann posters

2012-01-26T06:38:00.000-08:00

Thanks to Douglas for these.

2012-01-14T01:23:00.000-08:00

In Memory of Trish Keenan

2012-01-14T01:21:00.000-08:00

Jess Franco

2012-01-08T13:26:00.000-08:00

He has made more films than Fassbinder and worked with Klaus Kinski almost as many times as Herzog, but Jess Franco's name is still consigned to the trash bins of world cinema. Wrongly, though sometimes understandably, written off as a smutty peddler of Euro porn, Franco's name has conveniently been forgotten in too many circles. Disreputable, shambolic and perverse are pejoratives often used to decry Franco's films, whereas they could equally act as compliments. For at Franco's best, he can intoxicate the viewer with his devastating potion of lust, psychedelia and possession.

With such a forbidding output, filled by his own admission with plenty of rubbish, it can be a daunting task to start off on the Franco trail. By scouring the internet, one can quickly get a feel for which films to seek or avoid. The reassuring news is that even an uneventful or purely pornographic Franco film will most likely have an amazing soundtrack. It also gives one a valid excuse for owning such films when caught with them. The Vampyros Lesbos soundtrack by Manfred Hübler and Siegfried Schwab is probably the most well-known, having been played to death during the 'Lounge' explosion in 1996 and subsequently used in Tarantino's Jackie Brown. I remember buying the soundtrack, tempted by the stills and the lurid red vinyl, but Franco's name hardly stood out in the sleevenotes. The Manfred Mann soundtrack to Venus in Furs is highly recommended, but as far as I know, it seems there isn't an official release.

Thanks to this blog post by Stephen Thrower, who is writing a book devoted to Franco and his films, I started to wonder if I was missing out on something and to my shame, I have ignored a truly unique voice in world cinema. To date, I've only seen eight Franco films - A Virgin Among the Living Dead, Lorna the Exorcist, Necronomicon, She Killed in Ecstacy, Shining Sex, Sinner, Vampyros Lesbos and Venus in Furs. One needs a different kind of head space when under the spell of a Franco film. If one manages to acclimatise to the askew and heightened environment of these films, their magic works its way into your system and stays for days.

The most comprehensive writing so far on Franco can be found in the book, 'Immoral Tales (Sex & Horror in Europe 1956-1984)' by Cathal Tohill and Pete Tombs (Primitive Press 1994), which places him alongside the likes of Walerian Borowczyk, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Jean Rollin, José Larraz and José Bénazéraf. Along with his jazz and gourmet credentials, Franco shares with Luis Buñuel the exceptional honour of being marked by the Catholic journal, La Rivista del Cinematografo as the most dangerous film director for Catholic audiences. Borowczyk and Robbe-Grillet have always enjoyed an arthouse legitimacy due to having directed or written such greats as Goto, Island of Love and Last Year in Marienbad, but Franco had a harder time finding that kind of acceptance, despite acting as second unit director on Orson Welles's Chimes at Midnight. Regardless of his art pedigree, those willing to enter Franco's world can find a director who at times can match the transcendence of Apichatpong Weerasethakul's nocturnal reveries, the pagan spectres of Kenneth Anger or the Gothic surrealism of Jaromil Jireš .

I'm a convert, but also ashamed at myself for having ignored Franco for so long. Below are two torrid examples of the Spanish filmmaker at his most majestic.

A Virgin Among the Living Dead (1973)
This could be a hot-blooded cousin to Herk Harvey's glacially strange Carnival of Souls. It exists on the same life/death borders as Harvey's film and also shares the same eerie atmosphere. The narrative is so slight that it could fit into a lunchbox: Christina, a young woman visits her relatives to hear the reading of her deceased father's will, only to find out that she is in the company of the living dead. Yet with genre formalities swiftly taken care of, Franco is left to weave a densely oppressive atmosphere that transports the viewer into another realm. Bruno Nicolai's achingly plaintive score elevates A Virgin Among the Living Dead way above its B-movie roots. It is a score truly deserving of its own release, but as far as I know, it remains unavailable. As usual with Nicolai, the recording industry has left him in the shadow of his former collaborator, Ennio Morricone. I'm also fairly sure that one of the tracks in the film features the wordless echoes of Edda Dell'Orso as we see Christina reach out to her dead father in a haunted forest. The hypnotised nature of the performances brings to mind Herzog's Heart of Glass. It even feels as if the cameraman is sleepwalking through the film. My only minor gripe is with the final image that sees the living dead walking into a lake, and it's blatantly apparent by the way the actors hesitate that they don't wish to get wet.

The whole film works itself into you as if it were some fever dream. It's bizarre, sometimes crudely made, but highly potent with a lingering melancholy no doubt aided by Nicolai's score and the remote, electronically-treated cries of Christina's deceased father. For maximum effect, watch this film late at night in darkness.

Lorna the Exorcist (1974)
This film is lost in a no-man's land of its own making. Though its almost bloated with explicit sex, it's too possessed and creepily charged to function as pornography. The opening credits immediately make way for the film's anti-heroine, Lorna (coming across as a vampish version of Candy Darling), to work herself into a heady, sexual fever, the likes of which neither she nor the film itself recovers from. The dark, musty magic that almost emanates from Lorna's nether region permeates the whole film as she sets about seducing and possessing the daughter of a man she once helped with her dark powers. This is a film to be recommended with caution. If a film could give off carbon monoxide, Lorna the Exorcist would be a strong candidate. Its overpowering sexual energy is not to be taken lightly, but there is plenty to be impressed by here. Sometimes Franco gives the impression of having fallen asleep at the wheel. Standard scenes, such as a family walking along a corridor suddenly become infused with strangeness as Franco seemingly forgets to stop filming. There are moments in the film such as this that make you wonder whether you're in the hands of an amateur or a magus. The kitsch dialogue and set design threaten to capsise the film into Eurotrash territory, but there is enough genuine weirdness to keep the film at sea by itself.

As the 'Immoral Tales' book states, this is a bygone period in cinema. Mentioning Jess Franco in a development meeting will only earn you a red face, but now that David Cameron is keen to see films with a greater commercial potential, 2012 might be the time for a resurgence in exploitation cinema.

A big thank you is due to Pete Tombs from Mondo Macabro for giving me several DVDs and his 'Immoral Tales' book in a brown paper bag.

Václav Havel

2012-01-02T08:08:00.000-08:00

Never too late to post a link to this very inspiring account of Mr. Havel's life here.

Happy 2012

2011-12-24T14:00:00.001-08:00

Great to be back home after having spent most of this year in London making 'Berberian Sound Studio' and blowing a large proportion of my fee on expensive sandwiches that haven't really made me any healthier.

No concrete news about anything, but I felt it would be sociable of me to pop my head round the door and at least wish all readers of this blog a healthy, happy and democratic New Year. Let's hope that all Václav Havel fought for in Europe was not in vain.

Quite a few side-projects should be reacting with air in the near future:
An as-yet-untitled non-narrative short film with Scottish filmmaker and musician, Douglas Hart
and Márk Győri, who shot Katalin Varga. We shot this in Budapest several months ago and as it was made for the price of a Soho sandwich, with no official backing, we should be able to have it up on the internet as soon as it's finished. More news to follow.

Another short film is in the works, but we haven't even shot it yet. This is a bit of a weird one - a promotional film for a textile company to illustrate how their fabrics are home-loomed and hand-woven in Transylvania. I'd be the first to admit I know nothing about textiles, but this would be a chance to return to Transylvania with Márk Győri along with his 16mm camera and capture various things that eluded us when we were last there in 2006. If, if, if it all goes ahead, which would be around April, I'd supply the company with their required promotional film and also have the freedom to make my own longer 'atmosphere' version. No narrative - just a chance to bask in nature and those sublime Transylvanian landscapes.

'Weird Fairytales', the compilation album we, (The Sonic Catering Band) donated a track to is out now in a limited 12" vinyl edition of 200 copies through the Greek label, Absurd. More information here.

Three other records are lying in wait, time permitting. Once final checks are made and approved on my second feature film in January, there will be more time to devote to the recordings and the sleeve designs.

Finally, I wrote a tribute to Peter Tscherkassky's mighty short film, Outer Space in the January 2012 issue of Dazed and Confused magazine, which is lying on your local newsagent's shelves now.

Soviet Roadside bus-stops

2011-12-04T10:05:00.000-08:00

This site is for anyone who spends a troubling amount of time waiting for buses.

Berberian Sound Studio

2011-11-16T15:43:00.000-08:00

Just a few additional tweaks to make on the sound and then my second film, 'Berberian Sound Studio' will be ready to leave the nest. More information to come soon.

The photograph of the machines, Guido Adorni and Toby Jones was taken by Jack English.

Fred Judd

2011-11-13T10:27:00.000-08:00

Congratulations to Ian Helliwell for completing his documentary on Fred Judd. Can't wait to see it. More information here.

George Kuchar

2011-09-11T04:34:00.001-07:00

In the same week we've not only lost Jordan Belson, but George Kuchar too. Forget 'underground', 'camp' or 'abstract', these two men were just great filmmakers.

Jordan Belson: 1926 - 2011

2011-09-08T07:26:00.000-07:00

Limonádový Joe

2011-08-18T14:52:00.000-07:00

Saloon mayhem and high-thigh tease here in Oldrich Lipsky's 1964 Czech take on the Western - 'Limonadovy Joe'. As always, apologies for the lack of accents on names..

At the Surface

2011-08-08T08:35:00.001-07:00

A typically enigmatic blog here courtesy of Robert Hampson, founder of the mighty bands, Loop and Main. Several posters are included in the site including this rather spectacular Polish one for 'Solaris'. I once saw it for sale in Newman Street in London, but the price was even more forbidding than the film's eponymous planet.

By the way, those recent Loop reissues have aged remarkably well.

Scala Relapse

2011-08-04T12:31:00.000-07:00

This brings back memories.

Stephen Thrower

2011-08-04T12:27:00.000-07:00

Stephen (Cyclobe) Thrower has a blog and I've only just found out. Plenty to get into there.

Rest in Peace

2011-07-27T14:45:00.000-07:00

Two great old men have recently ventured from this dubious realm into the unknown.

The intrepid travel writer, Patrick Leigh Fermor died last month. For anyone interested in all things Danubian and Carpathian, Leigh Fermor's account of his travels during the 1930s, 'Between the Woods and the Water' still stands as the Holy Grail for those who refuse to use Global Positioning Systems. A fascinating obituary of what I imagine would be Werner Herzog's closest literary cousin can be found here.

Two unsung contemporaries of Leigh Fermor's whose writings warrant more attention are Rebecca West and David Smiley. West's 'Black Lamb and Grey Falcon' is something of an established historical and travel 'classic', but Smiley's criminally overlooked 'Albanian Assignment' is still lingering in charity shops. The latter is a wild account of a country fending off the fascists on the eve of its own descent into the darkest depths of communism, but don't let that put you off. It's one of the most chaotic and entertaining books I've ever read and it also has a glowing foreword by Mr. Leigh Fermor himself. Any book that describes Hoxha's handshake as 'flabby' must be worth reading.

Further down in the Balkans, it's also time to say a very fond farewell to Greek-Cypriot director, Mihalis Cacoyannis. A very interesting obituary here, despite the scandalous dismissal of Cacoyannis's debut, 'Windfall in Athens'/'Kyriakatiko Xypnima', which is a film that I could never live without. Most of us know Cacoyannis from 'Zorba the Greek', but the films really worth seeking out are 'Windfall in Athens' and 'The Girl in Black'/To Koritsi me ta Mavra'. Sadly, these are very hard to find on DVD. I could only get copies from a newspaper promotion and they're without English subtitles. 'A Matter of Dignity' and the Greek tragedy trilogy ('Iphigenia', 'The Trojan Women' and 'Electra') are more easily available (in Athens, at least) and with subtitles. 'Stella' is widely available in Greece, but that comes without subtitles. Why?

Both 'Windfall in Athens' (1954) and 'The Girl in Black' (1956) starred the real-life couple, Elli Labeti and Yiorgos Horn. The former film is the only romantic comedy that can fill my heart with joy rather than bile; the latter is an unremittingly bleak tail spin into tragedy set in an idyllic island. For my personal taste, Cacoyannis always had more olives in his trees than the other Greek giant, Angelopoulos, who despite his brilliance, often sends me into the wrong kind of reverie. Maybe it's a moot point to compare such different directors, but it's only because these are the two Greek names that have enjoyed most prominence in the UK. Hopefully that will soon change with this new, hungry blood bursting through in the form of Panos Koutras, Yorgos Lanthimos and Athina Rachel Tsangari.

The Colour of Pomegranates

2011-07-03T15:52:00.000-07:00

Second Sight will be releasing Sergei Paradjanov's 'The Colour of Pomegranates' in the UK this summer on DVD and it's reported to be a marked improvement on existing versions. The DVD will come with 'A Window on the World', a 75-minute documentary on 'The Colour of Pomegranates' by Daniel Bird featuring Sofiko Chiaureli, Tigran Mansuryan and many others. !!!!!

Italian Horror Soundtracks

2011-07-03T12:49:00.000-07:00

A few words about the new film: I’m long overdue in confirming the wonderful news that James Cargill is on soundtrack duties and has already been sending in some beautiful tracks. We’re in very safe hands.

More news about the film in general to follow at some point, but for now, I'm distracting myself with a rather rushed list of Italian horror soundtracks worthy of repeated listening.

Bruno Nicolai - Cry of a Prostitute, (La Dama Rossa Uccide Sette Volte) – directed by Emilio Miraglia, 1972

Nicolai should also take credit for conducting Morricone's masterpieces such as 'The Bird with the Crystal Plumage', but when he strikes out on his own, he can give the Maestro a serious run for his money. There is no shortage of wonders when it comes to Nicolai. I could have gone for the rasping synths and demented brass of Sergio Martino’s 'Case of the Scorpion's Tail', but 'Cry of a Prostitute' remains my favourite for its lush orchestration and dizzying harpsichord coda. You could wow someone on a first date with this soundtrack as long as you don’t mention the film it goes with.

Claudio Gizzi - Flesh for Frankenstein – directed by Paul Morrissey, 1973

Technically, this is the New York underground on honeymoon in Italy, but Gizzi's score firmly places this in Euro-romantic territory with a yearning score that elevates the film way above the knowing sleaze it revels in. I was a huge fan of the Morrissey New York films and was lucky enough to work with Holly Woodlawn several years ago, so this film has a special place in my heart; a delirious Udo Kier, Joe Dallesandro trying again not to be fazed by all the ladies in a spin around him, and Gizzi’s score that could almost be a sordid cousin to Mahler’s 5th.

Ennio Morricone - Who Saw her Die? (Chi l'ha vista morire?) – directed by Aldo Lado, 1972

How does one choose a favourite Morricone soundtrack? Even when it comes to his horror soundtracks, there is a ridiculous amount of treats to wade through that incorporate all manner of musical styles within one genre – free jazz, pop, drone, musique concrete and often all these elements mixed together. The three classic soundtracks for Dario Argento come to mind as does the creepy music box treatments for Luigi Bazzoni's 'The Fifth Chord', the aching sadness of Massimo Dallamano's 'Whatever Happened to Solange?', the incredibly heightened breathing on Aldo Lado's 'Short Night of the Glass Dolls', and the demonic jazz opening to Lucio Fulci’s ‘Lizard in a Woman’s Skin’. The man is a formidable genius who has blown many a mind with such a staggering scope of music, and it would be obscene to be humble if possessed with such magical talent. Morricone’s collaborators also deserve mention; his stalwart singer Edda Dell'Orso has the voice of the spheres and her wordless, languorous lullabies single-handedly define a whole era of Italian soundtrack music. Morricone’s band, Gruppo Di Improvisazione Nuova Consonanza also made their foray into the dark night of Italian horror with their soundtrack to Enzo G. Castellari’s 'Gli Occhi Freddi Della Paura'. The acronym-resistant Gruppo Di Improvisazione Nuova Consonanza could be seen as the Italian equivalent of the UK acronym-friendly outfit, AMM, but to my knowledge, Messrs. Cardew, Prevost, Rowe and Tilbury never got to make that Hammer Horror soundtrack.

The immediate Morricone signposts are absent from the ‘Who Saw her Die?’ soundtrack and we’re left with fairly sparse choral arrangements that are often strangely uplifting, and if you had no idea that this is a horror soundtrack, it wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to imagine a twee film with Bavarian school kids singing on their way to the local candy store after church. I’m still yet to see ‘Who Saw Her Die?’ and almost feel that it might corrupt the euphoria that the soundtrack effortlessly conjures. This is Morricone at his purest and most melodic, but the tension builds towards the end when he starts applying a delay effect to a choral loop and pins it against a sturdy rhythm that wouldn’t be out of place on a Broadcast or Cat’s Eyes album.

Fabio Frizzi - The Beyond – directed by Lucio Fulci, 1981

Frizzi collaborated several times with the unrepentantly sleazy Lucio Fulci, a director who was often in danger of becoming the Benny Hill of horror. But here, both soundtrack and excessive visuals take off on a demented apotheosis of incongruous funk, creepy piano and choral overdrive. The highlight is the spectacle of a man’s face getting torn apart by marauding tarantulas set to music more akin to ‘80s corporate instructional videos.

Nicola Piovani - Footprints on the Moon, (Le Orme) – directed by Luigi Bazzoni, 1975

This would have to be one of my favourite Italian horror soundtracks, if it can be rightly termed horror or giallo. Piovani's central flute and string chord progression lulls one into the loneliest of reveries. Brooding and full of yearning for something that maybe never was, this is a tender and beautifully understated soundtrack.

Goblin – Suspiria – directed by Dario Argento, 1977

I have a deep fondness for Goblin even when they’re at their worst. On ‘Suspiria’, Claudio Simonetti and his prog-goth band reach the summit with a relentless, bombastic soundtrack that bombards the cranium, especially at full volume. The soundtrack works equally well whether with the film or on its own. Eerie and devastating in equal measure.

It’s great to see a new generation of bands paying tribute to Goblin, but nothing matches the power and audacity of their early soundtracks. Whether it’s conscious or not, Simonetti strikes me as someone brave enough to occasionally venture beyond the pale of good taste, which is something to be commended. Fantastic.

Stelvio Cipriani - Baron Blood, (Gli Orrori del Castello di Norimberga) – directed by Mario Bava, 1972

I imagine that Cipriani would be another composer to keep Morricone on his toes. Some of the most breathtaking soundtracks from ‘70s Italian cinema have been composed by Cipriani. The wonderful Belgian couple, Bruno Forzani and Helene Cattet used Cipriani’s music to thrilling effect in their giallo mix-around, ‘Amer’. Mario Bava’s ‘Baron Blood’ is probably his best soundtrack, bar what Morricone did for ‘Danger Diabolik’, but that doesn’t fall into the giallo or horror bracket. On ‘Baron Blood’, Cipriani treats us to a cheery and tuneful soundtrack about a sadistic Austrian Baron.

Bruno Maderna - Death Laid An Egg, (La Morte Ha Fatto L'Uovo Giulio Questi) – directed by Giulio Questi, 1968

Maderna’s background in Milan’s Studio di Fonologia might make him an unlikely or perfect candidate for a giallo soundtrack depending on your point of view, but it’s the avant-garde schooling that gives several of the soundtracks listed here their otherness. Maderna worked very closely with Italy’s greatest modern composers, Luciano Berio and Luigi Nono, not to mention the hugely inventive but overlooked Marino Zuccheri. John Cage was no stranger to Maderna either and all that shows on this, the most immediately ‘difficult’ soundtrack here. At times, Maderna’s jagged score sounds as if it could have been recorded at Derek Bailey’s Company Week.

Riz Ortolani - Cannibal Holocaust – directed by Ruggero Deodato, 1980

A subversively romantic soundtrack to a savage and sickening film, especially for animal lovers. I don’t think I’ve ever come across such an extreme counterpoint as this. The soaring main theme only highlights the brutality on display, and as effective and catchy as Ortolani’s music is, I still regret having seen this film.

Nora Orlandi - The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh, (Lo Strano Vizio Della Signora Wardh) – directed by Sergio Martino, 1971

An eerie, sinister soundtrack that floats around the corners of the room like a poltergeist with its disembodied electronics and echo effects. It’s hard to discern what is soundtrack and what is sound design, which is definitely a good thing. The musicians were probably having a ball messing around with echo effects, but it doesn’t come across that way.

Other composers worth searching out are Fiorenzo Carpi, Gianni Ferrio and Amedeo Tommasi. I’m sure there are others missing from this list, but I’m just procrastinating today and should be getting on with actual deadline work, so I’ll sign off now.

General

2011-06-12T10:04:00.000-07:00

Both the Bohman Brothers and Sonic Catering albums are nearing completion. Sadly, we just don't have the money or space to release these on vinyl. I can't deny how special vinyl is, but the cardboard boxes records come in don't make for a pretty bedroom. So CD it is for these records, but we'll put plenty of love into it. Limited edition as always for the same reasons as above. More news soon.

The short film, 'Conduct Phase' is complete. The soundtrack by Roj made my week, and now all we have to do is wait for the whole thing to come out.

Szindbad

2011-06-12T09:16:00.000-07:00

I recently popped over to the Second Run DVD headquarters in London to do a short introduction to Zoltan Huszarik's 1971 film, 'Szindbad'. The film should be out on DVD in July for the first time ever in the UK, and it comes with a thoroughly well-researched and illuminating booklet by Michael Brooke. For anyone needing proof that Hungarian cinema isn't only populated by merchants of misery, then this film opens a portal into a different dimension laced with sensuous and heightened imagery that will thrill audiences and remind us filmmakers that we're quite rubbish in comparison to Huszarik. The film is worth its price just for a soup sequence that betters Godard's cosmos in a coffee mug in '2 or 3 Things I Know About Her'.

It seems as if the Eastern European new wave is coming alive again through Second Run. 'Intimate Lighting', 'Valerie and Her Week of Wonders', 'The Round Up' 'Love', 'The Ear', 'A Blonde in Love', 'Morgiana', 'Audition' and my favourite, 'The Cremator' are all available now.

The Lower East

2011-05-22T16:02:00.000-07:00

Since I thought the world was going to come to an end yesterday, I caught up on a few films that I've been meaning to watch for ages.
Rockets Redglare! by the late Luis Fernandez de la Reguera tells you everything you need to know about the late Rockets Redglare and then some. The infamous New York performer and hustler first came to my attention in Jim Jarmusch's early films and Nick Zedd's 'Police State'. When I made 'Bubblegum' with Zedd in 1995, I heard some pretty crazy and funny stories about Redglare, but nothing prepared me for how genuinely tragic and abusive his life was when watching the documentary. Although uncomfortably candid at times, it is worth tracking down. Messrs. Jarmusch, Zedd and others such as Steve Buscemi, Julian Schnabel and Willem Dafoe fondly talk about the ups and downs of working with such an erratic character who went from drug dealing to Sid Vicious and Jean-Michel Basquiat to some very memorable performances in American cinema.

Another late American genius getting the posthumous praise is Jack Smith in 'Jack Smith and the Destruction of Atlantis' by Mary Jordan. This is highly recommended for anyone interested in the New York underground and covers Smith's life and work as thoroughly as one could. The Warhol days are a highlight, but the film points out what many have claimed, that without Smith's influence, Warhol's work might have been very different. Some valuable insights from those that knew him - Jonas Mekas, Holly Woodlawn, Nick Zedd, Taylor Mead, Ken Jacobs and Tony Conrad. The latter put out two Jack Smith albums through the Table of the Elements label. 'Cold Starry Nights' from the 'Les Evenings Gowns Damnees 1962-64' album is a beautifully spectral slice of downtown, nocturnal wonder with Jack Smith narrating over a heady drone by Tony Conrad and John Cale. Also recommended: 'Flaming Creature: Jack Smith, his amazing life and times' published by Serpent's Tail + 'Wait for me at the bottom of the pool: the writings of Jack Smith' - edited by Jim Hoberman and Edward Leffingwell and published by High Risk. Who knows if Smith's supposedly greatest work - 'The Beautiful Book' will ever be published?

As far as I know, we're yet to see a documentary on of the greatest
downtown artists - David Wojnarowicz. The 'Postcards from America' film from 1995 is the closest we can get to that.

Some ramblings of mine can be found at the sterling Sound Awareness blog.

The Amateur's Bible

2011-05-15T02:49:00.000-07:00

Why Oxford University Press haven't bothered to reprint Terence Dwyer's wonderfully informative 1971 book, 'Composing with Tape Recorders' remains a mystery. The then £1.35 book now fetches prices close to the £100 mark and it's easy to see why for a book that is both thoroughly instructional and open-minded. Dwyer's writing and approach found its way into 'Berberian Sound Studio' more than any film. One can feel the spirit of British tape composers such as Desmond Leslie, Basil Kirchin, Trevor Wishart and the BBC Radiophonic Workshop within these pages.

Karinthy Frigyes

2011-05-15T02:25:00.000-07:00

Congratulations to 'Katalin Varga' colleagues - cameraman, Mark Gyori and Roberto Giacomello, who acted as the irredeemable Gergely. Mr. Giacomello acts as the great Hungarian writer, Frigyes Karinthy in a film directed by Aron Matyassy and shot by Mr. Gyori. To my shame, I've never read anything by Karinthy and I haven't seen the film yet, but I've heard great things about it. A link here in Hungarian. Since it's a TV film, I doubt if there are any immediate prospects for a UK screening, but one never knows.

Highlight of the year

2011-05-14T10:11:00.000-07:00

The Tate Modern are hosting a Jordan Belson evening tomorrow, which includes one of the greatest films I've ever seen - 'Allures'. I wrote this about the film a couple of years ago:

'How such intense cosmological rapture could be channelled into an obscure, 8-minute abstract film is beyond me. It’s also beyond me how Jordan Belson’s work remains almost invisible to this day. His work has often been overshadowed, but never eclipsed. I waited five years to see Allures after having read about it, and my anticipation was duly rewarded. It’s a film that singularly soars above the efforts of other abstract filmmakers by transcending any forbidding academic rigour or astrological hocus-pocus. It’s a report from another realm, lying in suspension and hidden way beyond the alternative mainstream radar. Celestial synonyms become redundant when attempting to convey the euphoria evoked in the viewer. Belson is that rarest of artists – a conduit, a transmitter of something beyond himself. At once psychedelic and divine, Allures embodies our furthermost and innermost wonders. '

Full details about the evening below:

JORDAN BELSON: FILMS SACRED AND PROFANE
London Tate ModernMonday 16 May 2011, at 6:30pm
Born in Chicago and raised in the Bay Area, Jordan Belson trained as a painter before turning his attention to filmmaking after discovering the abstract films of Oskar Fischinger, Norman McLaren and Hans Richter. Since 1947, Belson has explored consciousness, transcendence, and the nature of light itself in a visionary body of work that has been called ‘cosmic cinema’: brimming with vibrant colour, mandalas, liquid forms and mesmerising rhythms. Starting in 1957, Belson collaborated with sound artist Henry Jacobs on the Vortex Concerts, multimedia events that combined new electronic music from around the world with Belson’s visual effects projected on the 65-foot dome of the California Academy of Science’s Morrison Planetarium. This programme features rarely screened films including CARAVAN (1952), SEANCE (1959), a new preservation print of CHAKRA (1972), and more. Presented in association with, and introduced by, Cindy Keefer of the Center for Visual Music, Los Angeles.

Jordan Belson, Caravan, 1952, 16mm, 4 min
Jordan Belson, Seance, 1959, 16mm, 3 min
Jordan Belson, Allures, 1961, 16mm, 8 min
Jordan Belson, Samadhi, 1967, 16mm on video, 6 min
Jordan Belson, Chakra, 1972, 16mm, 6 min
Jordan Belson, Light, 1973, 16mm, 6 min
Jordan Belson, Cycles, 1974, 16mm, 10 min
Jordan Belson, Music of the Spheres, 1977/ 2002, 16mm on video, 7 min
at Tate Modern Starr AuditoriumBankside, London, SE1 9TGNearest Tube: Southwark / London Bridge
Tickets: £5 / £4 concessions

First Hurdle

2011-04-21T03:48:00.000-07:00

We finished shooting 'Berberian Sound Studio' yesterday. Just one day of second unit photography to do in early May and then on to making sense of the whole thing in a room for several months.

Radiophonic Weekend April 2nd and 3rd

2011-04-01T14:29:00.000-07:00

If only I could go to this. We don't only get BBC Radiophonic veterans, David Cain and Dick Mills, but also a sneak preview of Ian Helliwell's documentary, 'Practical Electronica: The Work of FC Judd' on Sunday. Wow! We're in London shooting 'Berberian Sound Studio', but I'm seriously considering phoning in sick this Sunday.

The Turin Horse

2011-02-15T01:07:00.000-08:00

John Cooper Clarke

2011-02-13T16:46:00.000-08:00

What better way to celebrate the day of love than with a little dedication to Salford's finest - John Cooper Clarke. He took Reading by storm last night. My only regret is that nobody recorded his performance, but anyway - what a night. Too bad that he doesn't get asked to present the Golden Globes awards. That would be something.

Helliwell

2011-02-08T14:09:00.000-08:00

http://www.ianhelliwell.co.uk thanks to Dan (Sculpture) Hayhurst for the tip.

Thank you

2011-02-02T23:46:00.000-08:00

A bit of a rushed blurb just to thank readers of this blog for comments and general support. I have to start rolling up my sleeves for this new feature film and put virtual comforts aside. I'm sure I'll have a little time to display the odd curiosity on this page, but using the wisdom of Network Rail, it will be a case of 'service alterations'.

Aside from the sound film, various other things are planned depending on time and money. I know that the Bohman Brothers are mastering their new album, so that should be appearing in the near future. We're mastering our own Sonic Catering compilation and slowly getting our heads round the artwork. If there is enough money and space, we'll release these two albums on vinyl. Without any bitterness whatsoever, the nature of these 'home' projects is that they rarely break even, so we always have to apply a modicum of caution. If we can afford to lose on these things, we'll happily lose.

I recently completed a 6-minute Super 8 film called, 'Conduct Phase' for a Warp compilation DVD. Music will be by Roj for this one. Hopefully this will be ready soon.

The Super-8 'Katalin Varga' diaries are now on youtube. The first of the four parts is here. The majority of it is location footage from April 2004 - July 2006. If you want to see the filming only, go straight to the third and fourth parts. The gentleman looking lost in the middle of Thursley Heath is my uncle whose 30,000 euro inheritance funded everything up until the final cut. Not the most comforting way to fund a film and the least I could do was show some old footage of him here.

We recently completed a Sonic Catering track for a compilation on the Greek label, Absurd. Not sure what the latest is with that, but it will surface at some point.

I'm not sure what I can say about the new film proper. We'll see how it goes or if it goes.

Katalin Ladik

2011-01-26T00:10:00.000-08:00

Some photos here from a recent exhibition in Serbia that lovingly archived the work of singer, actress, poet and performance artist, Katalin Ladik. It was a little extravagant to go all the way to Serbia for an exhibition, but some consolation now, as I just got my hands on the huge catalogue that accompanied the exhibition. Fantastic stuff - great poems, photos and interviews that remind us how difficult it must have been to do all this 'whimsy' in '70s Yugoslavia, especially as a woman.

The interviews with Ladik recount the various difficulties with the authorities (Lord only knows how much harder it must have been in neighbouring countries with harsher regimes), but also lovingly describe the atmosphere in both Novi Sad and Belgrade where ethnic Hungarians and Serbs clubbed together in art, radio, theatre and film. It must have been an amazing time. Some highlights are the music that Ladik made with Erno Kiraly, her crazed theatre performances in Samuel Beckett's 'Happy Days', Otto Tolnai's 'Bayer Aspirin' (directed by Miklos Jancso), and also a performance included in a film by Dusan Makavejev, but I have no idea which one.

Katalin Ladik is someone who should get more exposure in the West. She was an influence of sorts on the 'Berberian Sound Studio' script, but that was before I knew so much about her. Prior to reading this catalogue, Ms. Ladik was something of an enigma that came across as this wonderful, wild and dark combination of Cathy Berberian and Billie Whitelaw. Obviously she is so much more than a mirror of other greats.

I'm not sure if the catalogue is available on the internet, but anyway, here are some photos. Excuse the lack of accents on the names.

Bukowski night

2011-01-24T13:17:00.000-08:00

Tomorrow night, Pilvax Magazine in Budapest are running a 'Write Like Bukowski' night at a club called Vittula, Kertesz utca 4 from 19.00 until late. I'll be subjecting punters to my record collection, which has no relevance whatsoever to the world of Bukowski. But to make one concession to his spirit, I'll be drinking on the job. Let's see if we can get through the night without an argument with any of those whining jocks who can't tolerate anything that isn't 'uptempo'.

Trish Keenan

2011-01-19T09:06:00.000-08:00

What a rotten start to the year. There is still the feeling of disbelief and sadness about the passing of Broadcast’s Trish Keenan. The instinctive reaction on Friday was to stay silent. What words could possibly cushion the blow? But the tributes that appeared in many blogs proved that some relative comfort can be found in such collective admiration and sorrow for one of the greatest visionaries of our generation. With that in mind, here are a few words in memory of someone very fondly remembered.

My involvement in Trish Keenan’s life was fleeting. She and her partner, James Cargill started some music for my second film and then they had to go off on tour in December. Within that period, both Trish and James sent me or played me stuff that could help the atmosphere of the script. Alan Clarke’s rare, ‘Penda’s Fen’ and the psychedelic Catholicism of Ennio Morricone’s ‘The Devil is a Woman’ being two highlights. They also recommended the toysand techniques, soundawareness and foundobjects blogs. Some more information about what Broadcast were up to can be found here, but other than that, there is nothing more that can be said about their involvement. Since recent tragic events, the only appropriate thing is to put anything to do with music aside.

As with most of us, the Trish I knew was from her music and that goes back to Broadcast’s second single in the summer of 1996. By the time they released their third single/EP, ‘The Book Lovers’, they quickly transformed from fledglings into a unique and otherworldly band whose music and influences have filled us with the wonder needed to go out there and discover things for ourselves. They were worth getting excited about even when the wait for something new could be frustratingly long.

So much of what I know and love is down to listening to Broadcast or reading their interviews where they always left trails to the hidden depths of giallo soundtracks or to the garden sheds of British eccentrics such as Basil Kirchin. Broadcast have shaped the way I listen to music and also the way I see films. So many unexpected influences all came together into a world that was Broadcast's, but still open for us to feed from. They have always been curious enough or generous enough to share their influences, which is becoming a rarity in the world of music and film. More importantly, as Andy Votel rightly stated here, "they were probably the ONLY band I've ever known to sound even better than their vintage influences..." That I couldn't agree more with. An example here.

All of us are worse off without Trish Keenan, even if we don’t know it yet. During this grey period, I can still count myself relatively lucky for at least having been touched by her beautiful voice, words and melodies. Her musical persona is spectral and powerful enough to still call to us from the other side. Long may she continue to haunt us. A deeply admired and sorely missed human being. All thoughts to those close to Trish.

Some hope within a sad, grey day

2011-01-14T06:50:00.000-08:00

Varga Super 8

2011-01-13T14:34:00.000-08:00

Some stills from our Super 8 diaries whilst preparing for and shooting 'Katalin Varga' from 2004 until 2006. With any luck, this will soon be available for all to see on youtube. Very good memories. Somewhat heartbreaking that it can never be done this way again.

I hope there'll be plenty of others going out there alone and getting on with it. There's nothing like it. Just watch what you sign when you get to the end. The only advice I'd ever want to give.

Carpathian remedies

2011-01-13T14:07:00.000-08:00

This can cure a bad day.

Hungarian Design

2011-01-11T16:13:00.001-08:00

A Hungarian poster for Hiroshi Teshigahara's 1964 film, 'Woman of the Dunes'.

From the loft

2011-01-11T16:04:00.001-08:00

Following on from the post below, here's another World War I military drawing from an unmarked exercise book. Sniper's Posts, Rifle Racks, Lookout Posts, Trenches and Telescope Cradles that all look as if they were made for sleeve designs rather than warfare.

Organum

2011-01-10T16:05:00.000-08:00

A friend just alerted me to the shock of an official Organum website. Namedropping is a dirty habit I know, but if I have one opportunity to do it, I can proudly alert readers of this blog to a military drawing in the website, which was done by my grandfather who was a Company Quarter Master Sergeant during World War I. I donated this drawing to Organum's David Jackman through a mutual friend several years ago for a 10" sleeve for one of his solo efforts on the exemplary Die Stadt label and then forgot all about it until tonight. Whilst I still have some free time, I might try and find the book of drawings and post some up here.

Amer

2011-01-10T11:34:00.001-08:00

Trailer here for 'Amer' by Belgium's finest - Helene Cattet and Bruno Forzani. Watch out for Bruno Nicolai letting rip on an evil synth. Plenty of other treats in store for anyone partial to sleazy giallo, Marilyn Chambers or Kenneth Anger during his biker phase.

Entomological kicks

2011-01-02T00:06:00.001-08:00

The Found Objects blog posted a very nice link to 'Phase IV' - the only film directed by Saul Bass. As you would guess from a man who knows a thing or two about title sequences, it's a pretty intense trailer, but sadly the film is a little hit and miss in comparison. Good news, however, for anyone who needs their entomological kicks on the rocks. The 1971 film, 'The Hellstrom Chronicle' is a highly charged pseudo-documentary about the insect world that maintains that eerie 'World of Survival' aura (which was also from the same period) along with a brutal onslaught of death, noise and abstraction. The final ant and wasp sequences are relentless. Not the kind of thing you should see before venturing out for a picnic.

Jafar Panahi

2010-12-22T04:55:00.000-08:00

Online petition here to help Jafar Panahi. Please take a moment to read it and sign.

Shusha Guppy Bakhtiari Migration Part3

2010-12-21T13:48:00.000-08:00

All five parts of this are worth watching. Sometimes it's brutal viewing, but if you can get through the scenes of animal suffering, this documentary is up there with Herzog's best.

Free Jafar Panahi

2010-12-21T13:10:00.000-08:00

Please join this facebook page to protest against the ludicrous arrest of Iranian film director, Jafar Panahi. Please also pass it on to anyone you know. Peter Bradshaw from The Guardian wrote a very good piece about the whole thing here.

On a lighter note, I'll sign off with some wondrous footage and Persian folk singing from Shusha Guppy, the Iranian singer and writer who sadly passed away a few years ago.

Carnival of Souls

2010-12-19T15:31:00.000-08:00

Another wonky scan from an even wonkier film. I couldn't believe my eyes when I popped it into a small Hungarian supermarket to buy some bread and then found this 'lost' film next to a parade of DVDs that really shouldn't have been allowed into the country. The film is called 'Carnival of Souls' and the poor DVD had the humiliation of being displayed next to Nick Love's 'The Football Factory', both for the price of 330 forints (approx. £1). At first I almost ignored the film's revamped, lurid artwork, but the image of the director, Herk Harvey stood out and instantly brought me back to my teenage years when I saw Alex Cox presenting 'Carnival of Souls' on his fantastic 'Moviedrome' season on BBC2.

For one of the worst covers I've ever seen, 'Carnival of Souls' is a beautiful, eerie and desolate work that genuinely came from nowhere in the early '60s. I remember 'Carnival of Souls' being re-released in London in the summer of 1990 and the adverts did a good job of linking the film's influence to George Romero and David Lynch, but I missed the run and caught the film later on 'Moviedrome'. Plot, reviews and stuff here and elsewhere. I know it's not exactly hard to find 'Carnival of Souls' on DVD and the film has appeared in numerous editions, but it is worth mentioning how unique it is. You couldn't even try to make a film like this anymore. The fact that Herk Harvey never made another feature again only adds to the mystery. So many scenes have stayed with me for years - that zoom onto the pier at dusk, Mary's freak-out in a department store, the night drive and the unearthly organ soundtrack by Gene Moore. Films like this were made for cranky televisions in dim motel rooms with too many bed bugs.

For any readers of this blog who aren't already familiar with 'Carnival of Souls', it's not horror as the DVD cover would have you believe, but it still works its way into you, especially if you watch it late at night with a nice cup of Horlicks. I just saw that this DVD version of the film is also available. Criterion tend to put more stuffing into their DVDs, so this should be worth it. Very glad to rediscover this film after so many years. It brings me right back to being seventeen again, when it was such fun to be miserable.

Hovorim trosku Slovensky

2010-12-19T14:18:00.000-08:00

Excuse the wonky scans. As soon as I told the people in my local Copy bureau how good and affordable they were, the service suddenly plummeted to these sloppy depths. Maybe they're jealous that I have these really hot Slovak DVDs from SME newspaper, but most likely they don't give a damn and I'm just another minor irritation to be waved out of the store as quickly as possible. Anyway, down to business: SME newspaper teamed up with the Slovak Film Institute a few years ago to settle the score on this whole Czech New Wave business. After the willed collapse of Czechoslovakia, it felt as if the Czech part took all the glory, but the above film alone, 'Slnko V Sieti' ('The Sun in a Net') by Stefan Uher predates your Formans, Menzels and Chytilovas by at least a year.

Made in 1962, 'The Sun in a Net' was immediately banned by the lunatics in power, despite being a beautifully evocative piece of poetry with no overt political back-stabbing. In his essential book, 'The Czechoslovak New Wave', Peter Hames highlights some of the censor's objections. As the film centres on a solar eclipse, the censor in question regarded this as 'corresponding to the twilight of communism'. Even though 'The Sun in a Net' came to be eclipsed by more well-known and mostly Czech films from that period, it was the Czechs themselves who rescued Uher's masterpiece and kept its reputation aglow. For some reason, the film hasn't made much of an impact in the UK, but one hopes that will change.

The story itself starts off with the aforementioned eclipse seen from the towerblocks of Bratislava and follows our hero as he moves to the country to pursue the socialist ideal, whilst his girlfriend stays at home and finds another jock to play kiss chase with. Maybe such a crude synopsis won't gain the film many followers, but there is so much other stuff going on with other characters along with plenty of enriching observational detail. The camerawork by Stanislav Szomolanyi is remarkable and still feels advanced. The use of space and focus is quite unique and never has that 'look at me' feel that some cinematographers are guilty of. Bratislava concrete never looked so rich and cinematic. The film almost made me want to exist amidst the television aerials on the rooftops of Bratislava at that time. The communists might have been in power, but at least there weren't any binge-drinking stag weekender Brits pissing against your door.

SME have issued a whole series of these films and they're as cheap as a shot of Slivovice. Another recommendation is 'Slavnost V Botanickej Zahrade' ('Celebration in the Botanical Garden') by Elo Havetta with a soundtrack by the incredible Zdenek Liska.

Scala

2010-12-17T01:29:00.000-08:00

These scans are from my first visit to London's Scala Cinema in 1990. Prior to that, movie-going tended to be about picking one's nose in the back seats of the local ABC or Odeon Cinemas in Reading. The Scala, however, was in a whole other dimension. I went to a David Lynch double-bill with a few shorts thrown in. This was when Lynch was still a relative mystery to us suburbanites - before his Palme D'Or or Twin Peaks. 'Eraserhead' instantly changed everything for me. The film had such a strong pull. Maybe too much of a pull in hindsight. An 'anxiety of influence' as some have called these things. Anyway, but for those of us '80s kids who wanted something other than 'Cocktail', this was an initiation and I couldn't think of a better venue for it.

The Scala was a members only cinema and the cost of annual membership was 50p. On top of that, one had to pay £3.30 for the films, but usually each programme consisted of three films, so it worked out at £1.10 per film. If you were unemployed, or unwaged as they tactfully call it now, the price went down to £2.00. The cinema itself felt as if it had been transported over from the dilapidated Habsburg Empire and reimagined by a King's Cross pimp. The whole place had the feeling of both faded grandeur and sleaziness - addictively decadent for someone from the suburbs. The seating in the unusually dark auditorium was very steep and the Northern Line trains often rumbled beneath. The poolhall aroma of stale booze combined with more illicit fragrances still comes back to me on occasion. The screen itself always had a deep red hue between films and just stood erect like a cross between a James Turrell light installation and the monolith from '2001'. The Scala cats often wandered in to be fed by a few vagabonds who brought in fish bones in plastic bags, which often rustled too much during films. I have a great memory of one old man who kept reciting Robert Mitchum lines during a double-bill of 'Night of the Hunter' and 'Build My Gallows High' whilst feeding the cat.

Up until its closure, the Scala introduced me to works by Lynch, Peter Greenaway, Derek Jarman, Jim Jarmusch, Russ Meyer, Luis Bunuel, Walerian Borowczyk, Dario Argento, Nicolas Roeg, George Kuchar, Richard Kern, Nick Zedd, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Kenneth Anger, Andrei Tarkovsky, Paul Morrissey and others. The all-nighters usually consisted of creepy Italian horror, sadomasochistic kicks or Monty Python. Bands sometimes turned up to perform a 30-minute set before a film of their choice. Gallon Drunk played before 'Dillinger' in 1993, and Stereolab and Huggy Bear played before 'The Bird with the Crystal Plumage' in 1992. I missed the latter and I still regret it.

When 'If' was screened along with a '?' feature, which turned out to be Kubrick's then-withdrawn 'A Clockwork Orange', it spelled the end of the Scala Cinema. Other factors such as rising rents contributed to the Scala's downfall, and ultimately it felt as if times and viewing habits were changing in general. The cinema closed in 1993 and that was the end.

The Scala came back to life in 1999 as some slick nightclub/band venue. I went to one Hugh Hefner party there, which was overgrown with clowns from those Britpop bands of the day. I was in a foul mood around that time, so maybe it wasn't fair to judge what was obviously a big effort to make something of the place. Russ Meyer showed up and went on and on about breasts. The irony hit me that it was in that very refurbished space where I first saw a triple bill of Meyer's films, 'Mudhoney', 'Motorpsycho' and 'Faster Pussycat, Kill! Kill!', but without the rotten 'New Lad' irony of the latter part of the decade.

More Ben Burtt

2010-12-16T14:44:00.000-08:00

This book is hardly esoteric, but I can't wait to get my hands on it. I haven't even seen a copy yet, but I imagine this would be a gift and a half for soundheads.

Hilda

2010-12-16T14:07:00.000-08:00

Stuck in a lift with my favourite actress, Hilda Peter.

Dennis Nyback

2010-12-16T01:53:00.000-08:00

I could spend all day reading this Dennis Nyback blog.

Trash

2010-12-15T13:20:00.000-08:00

Some very good links here to some of the most daring and hard-working film collectors out there. What with youtube and the internet in general, the only inherent risks posed to the film collector are repetitive strain and maybe the odd trojan horse. These obsessives - Johaness Schonherr, Jack Stevenson and Dennis Nyback sometimes risked their lives to obtain hidden celluloid treasures.

Messrs. Schonherr and Nyback ran the Lighthouse Cinema in New York during the latter half of the '90s. Stevenson usually travels alone with his film shows, but as far as I know, they're all still active, despite the fact that all this esoterica has lost some of its covert edge. It would be safe to say that all three gents paved the way for so much of the grindhouse ephemera and other oddities that are all too often lumped into throwaway clips that we take for granted. However, some genuinely strange and beautiful cinematic shadows have emerged from all this rummaging by the three intrepid collectors.

I was lucky enough to meet Messrs. Schonherr and Stevenson and purchase books from them. 'Trashfilm Roadshows: On the Road with Subversive Movies' by Johaness Schonherr featured plenty of dirt on various New York acquaintances of mine from the mid-1990s, but it's the chapters on his visits to North Korea that are far more revealing than tales of irate German feminists attacking Nick Zedd. It's hard to comprehend the lengths Schonherr went to in order to track down the legendary Pulgasari by Shin Sang-ok. Rumour has it that in typical producer fashion, North Korea's Dear Leader, Kim Jong-il arranged for the kidnapping of South Korean director, Shin Sang-ok, and in 1985 the pair formed an unlikely producer/director alliance that was creatively fruitful. 'Pulgasari' rivals 'Godzilla' and comes close to the heights of the great Ray Harryhausen's work. Shin Sang-ok was one of the lucky few who fulfilled every film director's dream - to flee from the clutches of his/her producer during a film festival. However, for all Schonherr's flamboyant efforts in securing copies of 'Pulgasari' and other North Korean delights, the cruel irony is that had he waited a few years, he could have done all the above without having to get out of bed.

Jack Stevenson's book on Benjamin Christensen's rarely seen 1922 movie, 'Haxan' is recommended as well as his personal recollections of grindhouse and other exotic delights - 'Land of a Thousand Balconies - Discoveries & Confessions of a B-Movie Archeologist'. The latter book has an intoxicating chapter that conveys the stench and suffocating air of danger that used to pervade grindhouse cinemas in the '70s. That amyl nitrate rush still lingers here, but it can be difficult to discern the trash from the garbage. What I admire about the Schonherr/Nyback/Stevenson alliance is the fact that their tongues never stray too far into their cheeks and they have enough of a background in cinema to know what is really worth preserving for future generations.

Happy Days in 1995

2010-12-10T04:11:00.000-08:00

Some clips from an early short film called, 'Bubblegum'. We shot this in a New York toilet in the Lower East Side, September 1995. The picture above shows me and Nick Zedd. I'm the one on the left with the hair and Nick's the one on the right with the wig. These days, politics aside, it's the other way round. Holly Woodlawn is in the top photo. As always, the budget was a joke, but thanks to my Greek relatives in Queens, we could stay with them, and then it was just the cost of J train tickets, give or take a few other bills here and there.

Great memories even though I've lost touch with almost everyone from those days. The film itself is pretty ropey, so I'm in no rush to show it.

Both photos by Tessa Hughes-Freeland, a filmmaker in her own right.

Cipriani

2010-12-10T04:09:00.000-08:00

I wouldn't mind this for Christmas.

Daniel Bird interview

2010-12-07T14:17:00.000-08:00

Plenty to get excited about here. Pen and paper at the ready.

Walden

2010-11-29T01:27:00.000-08:00

'This film being what it is, i.e. a series of personal notes on events, people (friends) and Nature (Seasons) - the Author won't mind (he is almost encouraging it) if the Viewer will choose to watch only certain parts of the work (film), according to the time available to him, according to his preferences, or any other good reason. To assist the Viewer in this manner, particularly in cases of repeated viewings (forgive the Author this presumption), the following Contents, a list of scenes and their time tables, reel by reel, have been prepared.' Jonas Mekas, December, 1969

Just looking at this reel chart to Mekas's epic diary film, 'Walden - Diaries, Notes and Sketches' is like a Who's Who directory of the New York Underground. Even though I read about Mekas in 1991 and attempted (and failed) to meet him several times, it wasn't until 1998 during an American Underground season at London's Barbican, NFT and Lux cinemas that I saw his three-hour masterpiece in all its glory.

I would admit that my initial attraction to 'Walden' was not the filmmaking itself, but the curiosity of seeing everyday footage of Stan Brakhage, Shirley Clarke, Andy Warhol, The Velvet Underground, Nico, Tony Conrad, Beverly Grant, Allen Ginsberg, Carl Dreyer, Yoko Ono, John Lennon, Gregory Markopoulos, Edie Sedgwick, Jack Smith, Hans Richter and others that Mekas was around. Strangely, when watching the film, all those in-between moments of dinner with the family, feeding swans by the lake and other private atmospheres become much more magical than spotting Warhol and other art luminaries. I previously had Mekas down as a film exhibitor and writer (through his Anthology Archives cinema in the Lower East Side and Film Culture bulletin) who shot footage on the side. After seeing 'Walden', the man is definitely a filmmaker who exhibits and writes on the side.

Mekas is notorious for his murky involvement in the prosecution of Jack Smith's now quaint, but then obscene 'Flaming Creatures' in the early '60s. Mekas put his livelihood on the line to defend Smith's film in court, which is a staggering gesture, when he was essentially an exhibitor/distributor with no personal involvement in the film, as far as I know anyway.

For me, Mekas was just as much of a catalyst to the American art explosion of the '60s as Warhol. What's also worth noting is that both men came over from Eastern Europe; Mekas from the USSR (now Lithuania) and Warhol from Czechoslovakia (now Slovakia) and their involvement with Jack Smith heavily influenced future paths.

The French DVD label, Re:Voir put out a DVD box-set of 'Walden' at a hefty price, but it's worth it. The use of music, field recordings and silence in 'Walden' is unique, and if you want a genuine portrayal of '60s New York, downtown bohemia this is far more evocative than yet another mainstream recreation of so-called 'Warhol cool'.

The Mekas web link above opens up several diary pieces. I lose track a little, but I remember some more conventional artist portraits he did that still had a very intense atmosphere. The use of music by that nutcase, Hermann Nitsch certainly helped.

Also worth mentioning is 'New, Old' by the French actor, Pierre Clementi. Clementi is mostly known for playing the horny thug in Bunuel's 'Belle De Jour', but this 1979 diary film he put together is really something. It's a trippier version of 'Walden' showing Clementi's film experiences with the likes of Klaus Kinski, Miklos Jancso, Paul Morrissey and Viva. Here you can see that it screened at Mekas's Anthology cinema, which would have been the perfect place to see it.

Here is a very small list of '60s American underground film and music that has only become more powerful and mysterious with age. Maybe this is nostalgia, but plenty of ideas here that are yet to be opened up and built on by our generation.

Tony Conrad/Beverly Conrad (Grant) - Straight and Narrow (John Cale/Terry Riley music)
Tony Conrad - The Flicker
Jordan Belson - Allures
Stan Brakhage - Dog Star Man
Robert Nelson - Oh Dem Watermelons (a very unusual Steve Reich soundtrack)
George Kuchar - The Craven Sluck
The Whitney Brothers - Yantra
Kenneth Anger - Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome
Shirley Clarke - Bridges Go Round

Many omissions, which is why I'd never be a curator.

Morgiana

2010-11-25T00:34:00.000-08:00

Another jewel from Second Run DVD, Juraj Herz's 'Morgiana' is delirious late-night viewing. Even though it doesn't quite reach the hysterical heights of his previous, untouchable 'The Cremator', 'Morgiana' is still a blast. If you're partial to Czech Gothic, then this is well worth your attention. I'll leave it for other websites to detail the plot, but what should be highlighted is the score by Lubos Fiser, who left us one of the most beautiful soundtracks in 'Valerie and her Week of Wonders' (available through Finders Keepers). Fiser's 'Morgiana' score is a little more heavy-handed, but when it opens up its darker and more intricate wonders, you won't be able to imagine life without it. The good news is that I saw an advert for the 'Morgiana' soundtrack on a Finders Keepers CD of 'Saxana, the Girl on a Broomstick', which sadly doesn't quite live up to its title.

Herz is probably the only director who can be excused for excessive use of wide angle lenses. Somehow he gets away with it as there's so much other sinister stuff going on. We also get a devastating cat, whom the film is named after. Those insistent Siamese eyes are fantastic, urging our scandalous heroine to get a move on with her wicked deeds. A great bit of feline casting to rival Robert Altman's 'The Long Goodbye'.

It's worth emphasising how great it is to find such previously bastard-rare films so easily available now. You couldn't even dream of finding anything close to this in Reading during the '90s, but to see 'Morgiana' on sale in my hometown feels like a triumph. One might argue that part of the thrill of all these films and soundtracks was their secretive status, but whether you find these wonders in Reading's HMV or in a skip in Brno, they'll still cast their spell.

It's worth looking at both the toysandtechniques and Sound Awareness blogs, as they recently mentioned Zdenek Liska, who provided Herz's 'The Cremator' with its eerie choral soundtrack. Some glimmers of hope with a forthcoming soundtrack release on Finders Keepers. Liska is a master and youtube is all the more richer for featuring some of his works.

Cramps

2010-11-22T04:07:00.000-08:00

Not the much-missed band, but the Italian record label responsible for monster greats such as Ennio Morricone's 'Gruppo di Improvisazione Nuova Consonanza', John Cage, Martin Davorin Jagodic and Costin Miereanu. A friend recently tried to make me jealous by showing me a bunch of Cramps reissues he bought from a Japanese reissue label that have been immaculately reproduced on CD. Be warned, they're not cheap.

I'm hoping that I'll wake up on Christmas to my Cramps favourites, 'Luna Cinese' by Costin Miereanu from Romania and 'Tempo Furioso' by Martin Davorin Jagodic from the former Yugoslavia. I've only had these on bootlegs, but they were a big influence - very immersive stuff that feels as if it was beamed over to us from another radiophonic dimension.

What was

2010-11-21T13:51:00.000-08:00

I came across this very extensive article by Folke Rabe on his stellar 1967 drone epic, 'Was??'

Jim O'Rourke reissued this in the late '90s through his Dexter's Cigar label, under the new title of 'What??' and instead of the original's 'Proteinimperialism' flipside track, the CD contains a slowed-down extended version of 'What??', which is also helpfully titled, 'What??'

Despite the forbidding references to harmonics, partials and cycles in the Folke Rabe online article, what you get for all that laboratory hocus pocus is an incredibly beautiful, strange and glacial current of sound that feels as if it's inherently part of some magnetic field. I first heard this at a friend's house in the middle of nowhere back in 2001. We were unusually high on unpasteurised goats' milk from a local herd and since the night sky was so vast and clear, the eerie moor outside seemed almost floodlit when we looked out the window. That Folke Rabe track stayed in me that night. In hindsight, anything would sound amazing in that environment, but since then I've listened to 'What??' through headphones on the bus, in the dentist's waiting room and various other places, and it still sounds just as out there and remote.

For my money, I prefer this album to a lot of the stuff I've heard by La Monte Young and others mining similar territory. When the oscillator warms up on 'What??', the whole track transports you into its own spectral realm, and it's not a bad place to be. The production was made possible by the electronic studio of the Swedish Radio in Stockholm, and sadly it seems as if those great days of smoking a cigar beside a bank of oscillators and modulators in a national radio studio are numbered.

Girls in the Sun

2010-11-18T13:46:00.000-08:00

A link below to take your mind off David Cameron:

After harping on about the 'Girls in the Sun' soundtrack, here it is on youtube. Thanks to Ben for tipping me off. A somewhat clumsy mishmash of different tracks from the soundtrack. The best track, 'Annabelle (One Morning)' is missing, but you get the idea.

Apparently the whole film is on youtube, so I'll watch it soon. So good to see all that sun and sea. I'd rather mess around on a Greek island than sit around waiting for film funding to materialise. I really miss Greek food - vlita is my favourite. It's a weed that is boiled and served with olive oil (extra virgin), lemon and salt. Tasty as hell, but not what people want to eat in the UK, so David Cameron might have something to say about that.

Sound on Film - Interviews with Creators of Film Sound

2010-11-18T03:32:00.000-08:00

This book is worth every penny. Sound recordists/mixers/designers always give the best interviews. Walter Murch is always on the ball and very illuminating, but special mention should go to Ben Burtt, who because of his commercial work never quite gets the artistic recognition he deserves. Even though Burtt brought mammoth films such as 'Star Wars' and 'Raiders of the Lost Ark' to sonic life, the work that went into them is far more creative and experimental than what I've heard on so-called arthouse fare. Anyone who cares about film knows that the thought of laying on library sounds onto a soundtrack is on a par with eating ready-made microwave meals. Before Murch and Burtt started work in the '70s, no credence was given to sound and library effects were a given. As Burtt recalls, every studio had their own sound stock and he could quickly tell an MGM punch from a Paramount punch. It was directors such as Coppola and Lucas who put the emphasis on original sound and found the time and money to allow Messrs. Murch and Burtt to take a hike for a year and come back with material.

Burtt's recollections about how the 'Star Wars' sounds were conceived and then constructed is mindblowing. This is essential reading and gives us all hope that there is still so far to go as long as the will is there. Sadly, another hero, Alan Splet might have already passed away by the time this book was compiled. I have a 32-page piece on the making of 'Eraserhead' from Cinefantastique magazine (September 1984) that details some of the sound work Splet did with Lynch. Strange how Splet's rumbles and roars have become somewhat generic in film now, but nothing can beat what he did on 'Eraserhead' and 'The Elephant Man'.

Greek music

2010-11-18T00:28:00.000-08:00

The discovery of both the toysandtechniques and Sound Awareness blogs has been a revelation. I just can't believe these guys. The bar has been raised. The amount of dedication and enthusiasm found here is unparalleled. Searching and rummaging around junk/second hand shops and elsewhere for these treasures is no minor feat. Compared to these heroes, an alarming number of journalists from national publications often come across as the professional equivalent of the idle basking shark; passively allowing those press releases to gently waft in to a gaping, smelly mouth. Often lazy of ear and ill of manner, some of the journalists I've encountered only place importance on the fact that the film or piece of music in front of them is represented by a press release and publicist, courtesy of a distributor or record company. Not a press release in sight on these blogs. You can almost smell the dust from those scanned sleeves. Fantastic.

It was great to hear a clip of Greek music by Poppy Asteriathi and Lakis Pappas from their 'Another Sunday Gone' album on toysandtechniques. If the track on that blog tickles your tiropita, you could do a lot worse than a soundtrack by Stavros Xarhakos. The film is called 'Girls in the Sun' (Koritsia ston Ilio) and is from 1968. I haven't seen the film, but this soundtrack has a great atmosphere to it - very laidback in a melancholy way. 'Annabelle (One Morning) is a stand out and most of the soundtrack revolves around that musical theme. I picked this up on spec in Athens earlier this year with a bunch of other things that looked interesting, but didn't quite deliver. Not an easy soundtrack to find if you're not in Greece, but with any luck one of these labels such as Finders Keepers might reissue it.

Two recommendations

2010-11-17T11:02:00.000-08:00

A bit of a leg up for a couple of friends, not that they need it.

Geoff Cox, contributor to the 'Katalin Varga' soundtrack, co-producer of Lucile Hadzihalilovic's 'Innocence' and author of 'Anna and the Witch's Bottle' amongst many other things, has brought a new work of wonder into this filthy world. 'Haunted Air', the book in question, takes the reader through Ossian Brown's photographs of American Hallowe'en celebrations from 1875-1955. The text is by Geoff Cox and the introduction is by David Lynch. The publisher is Jonathan Cape. A Sound Awareness blog also has a piece on 'Haunted Air'.

Dan Hayhurst, another contributor to the 'Katalin Varga' soundtrack, has a kaleidoscopic album out under his Sculpture moniker. The album is called, Rotary Signal Emitter' and even if you don't have a record player, you'll want to own this album when you see it. This month's Wire has something about Mr. Hayhurst's long-player.

Stereo

2010-11-17T09:57:00.000-08:00

This is what you miss out on when downloading music.

http://www.stereostack.com/

Another carryover ..

2010-11-11T01:57:00.000-08:00

http://fingersports.blogspot.com/

Toys and Techniques

2010-11-10T15:56:00.000-08:00

http://toysandtechniques.blogspot.com

We should all bow down to whoever put this up.

Sonic Catering Allsorts

2010-10-31T23:46:00.000-07:00

A compilation of Sonic Catering tracks should be on its way along with the Bohman Brothers album at some point early next year. We're planning a double album of previous tracks along with one or two new ones thrown in from a recent recording stint. Our last album proper was 'Seven Transdanubian Recipes' in 2003 and then all of us became preoccupied with other activities. Despite a seven-year hiatus, we still see this compilation as our 15th anniversary celebration. The kitchen photo above was taken by me during our first recording session in Reading, November 1996. The band was founded by me and schoolmate Jon Fletcher earlier that year, but we neither had the equipment nor knowledge necessary to put the whole thing into practice. Jon's older brother, Colin came along with a stack of effects units, either home-made or acquired from second-hand shops and skips. One of my proudest moments was when the near-extinct UK Film Council paid Colin a few months ago to get his Watkins Copicat out, (a device we probably overused on most early Sonic Catering records) and make some demos for my new (and currently in limbo) film.

Band 'membership' was always very loosely defined depending on who was around or not. Tim Kirby came along to help us with our first live shifts in 1998 and has remained an essential part of the band to this day. Other guests include Colin Potter, Dan (Sculpture) Hayhurst, Clive Graham, Horton Jupiter, Alexander Holmes, R.R. Habarc, Zsolt Sores, Zsolt Kovacs, Pal (en) Toth, Jozsef Juhasz, Jozef Cseres, Adam Csenger, Janos Horvath, Kata Peto, Reka Acel and Gabor Szakacs.

Our sound always revolved around the preparation and cooking of food. More on that on the compilation sleevenotes. The last album saw a minor departure from the formula in that it focused more on food science and some of the more peripheral sounds associated with cooking. We listened to records by Zoviet*France, Nurse with Wound, Glenn Branca, Robert Ashley, Alvin Lucier, Martin Davorin Jagodic, Steve Reich, The Hafler Trio, Folke Rabe and Costin Miereanu, and tried our best to deny their influence.

The average cost of releasing a 500-edition record was around £800. We almost always used the same vinyl pressing plant in the Czech Republic, and in those pre-European Union days, we had to go up to the cargo section of Heathrow Airport in Colin's van, go through all the waiting and paperwork at customs, walk up to the loading bay and make sure we weren't picking up a crate of bananas. Needless to say, the records sold poorly, we never broke even and the debts eventually crept up on me by the end of 2001. Somehow it didn't matter. At least we were in control and never felt that some outside, vampiric entity was sucking our blood.

For us, 'success' was to continue working, see our records on sale in Rough Trade, get a good review, (assuming we actually got reviewed) and have some of our heroes do remixes for us. The now defunct Melody Maker once called us 'pretentious cunts', which probably meant we were doing something right.

Despite the long silence and our dietary differences, Colin, Tim and I have always stayed together. Geography, domestic duties and our other activities have made it almost impossible to maintain the momentum we once had, but we still keep that Sonic Catering back door unlocked in the hope that we can be in the same place at the same time again.

As with most people who make music, films or still write love letters, it's never enjoyable to revisit your own work. The passing of several years has helped us to put our obscure past in some perspective. That perspective being, we have made some rubbish music that time has worsened, but also enough strong material that now has its own strange life and can justify another gamble of several hundred pounds. Since the closure of the exemplary Anomalous Records in Seattle, it's very hard for us to distribute records, but we'll work something out. Hopefully more information soon about the compilation and a small piece we recently recorded for another label.

Heavy Metal

2010-10-28T05:40:00.000-07:00

One of the few highs of the last few weeks was discovering 'The Decline of the Western Civilisation Part II: The Metal Years' on youtube. I haven't seen this since my school days, when even in the late '80s, having a peroxide poodle perm seemed somewhat incongruous even though I had the hair to do it. Seeing the film again after so many years feels even stranger and more distant, but it remains a very entertaining and tragic piece of filmmaking by the fantastic Penelope Spheeris. Her documentary is far superior to 'Heavy Metal Parking Lot' which just rips into a bunch of kids doing what kids do. Spheeris never resorts to mocking her subjects and in her loving hands, we get some wild interviews with the headbangers, the groupies and the likes of Lemmy, Ozzy Osbourne and those hairy chestnuts, Aerosmith recounting their days of debauchery with Wagnerian splendour.

I'm yet to see all the parts again, but if my memory serves me well, I remember Mr. Osbourne having trouble pouring orange juice and also a bizarre 'de-metallisation' centre where delinquents were sent to be shorn of their mullets and force-fed classical music. Lemmy gets the best quote when asked if he's bothered about younger bands copying Motorhead:
"Good luck to them. Maybe they'll do something we can copy later."
A highly recommended documentary that never judges some of the more wayward comments and behaviour on display. Why isn't this available on DVD? It might be of a bygone era and the music won't inspire you to pick up a guitar, but what it says about men, fame, sex and self-destruction is just as apt as anything in more highbrow films.

The Rough Guide to Cult Movies

2010-10-13T05:28:00.000-07:00

The Rough Guide have just put out their third edition of 'The Rough Guide to Cult Movies' and it features a few film directors writing about their personal cult favourites. Nicolas Roeg, Atom Egoyan, John Hillcoat, Chris Petit, James Marsh, Joe Lawler & Christine Molloy, Gideon Koppel and others including myself pick various films that mean more to life than anything made by Michael Winner.

Some great additions in the book and obviously, one can argue endlessly about omissions (no 'Fantastic Planet'), but any publication that includes films by Jack Smith and Fernando Arrabal amongst the more thoroughbred cult fare is worth a read. My inclusion in the book is the stellar 'Allures' by Jordan Belson. It was great to be asked to contribute especially since I grew up on books such as Danny Peary's three-volume 'Cult Movies' and 'Midnight Movies' by Jim Hoberman and Jonathan Rosenbaum.

Gyorgy Feher and Bela Tarr

2010-10-06T16:15:00.000-07:00

About a year ago, I saw a very good Hungarian film called 'Apafold' (Father's Acre), which, as is mostly the case with Hungarian and Polish cinema, looked ravishing. The director, Viktor Oszkar Nagy mentioned the films of the late Gyorgy Feher as an influence and since then, I've been trying to track down his two hidden masterpieces, 'Szurkulet' (Twilight) from 1990, and 'Szenvedely' (Passion) from 1998. Even in Hungary, Feher's films remain elusive, despite the occasional screening on Duna TV. A search on the internet doesn't reveal much either, since the name is fairly common. Soho types who are prone to giving their offspring exotic, eastern European names, take note; half of these names in Hungary and neighbouring countries are not as strange as they sound: Gyorgy Feher translates as George White, Istvan Szabo - Steve Taylor, Katalin Varga - Kath Cobbler.

Last Sunday, a friend turned up with VHS bootleg quality versions of the aforementioned films. Rather than being a distraction, the illicit murkiness of the third-generation VHS only adds to the illicit joys of watching a ragtag bunch of palinka-swigging burnouts viewing the bottle and everything around them as half-empty. It's more a case of 'life's too long' for these characters, rather than 'life's too short'. Superficially, both 'Twilight' and 'Passion' inhabit the same monochrome netherworld of misery and duplicity that soaks through Bela Tarr's films. Had I not seen the credits, I would've sworn that either 'Twilight' and 'Passion' were the work of Tarr. So it comes as no surprise to see Tarr credited as co-writer on 'Passion', which is an adaptation of Cain's 'The Postman Always Rings Twice'. However, these films are not just some faded xerox of what Tarr usually does so effectively, unlike the cliched one-take trawls through the kocsma (to be explained later) and other dens of misery that quite a few younger filmmakers attempt so half-heartedly. Feher's films are a genuine, delirious bout of moonshine-addled misery and are unique.

Who knows who came up with this sub-genre (if it can be called that) first, Tarr or Feher, as different rumours credit both as influencing the other. Tarr hit upon the 'style' he's known for with 1988's 'Karhozat' (Damnation), but it's 1994's seven-hour gloom marathon, 'Satantango' that excels in its bilious wretchedness. 'Satantango' is one of the most astounding and mesmerising films I've ever seen and anyone who values cinema as an artform should see it once. Some films are so sleazy, you need a shower afterwards. After 'Satantango', you'll need a stomach pump. It's as if Tarr took Tarkovsky's devotion to the elements and bled all the colour and spirituality out, leaving us with a bastard, prosaic vision of rain, mud, booze, decaying walls and the everyday textures of the kocsma. The kocsma is a very specific kind of bar that has no direct translation in English. If Falstaff existed now in Hungary, you'd find him on the floor in the kocsma. It's the kind of place you'd get thrown out of if you were sober. The alcohol on offer is industrial strength and even if you opt for wine, it often comes out of metal vats as if in a canteen. If you have a hangover after a drinking session in some of these taverns, the chemical residue that corrodes your head the morning after is nothing like what one suffers after getting drunk on regular booze. Tarr's films have given the kocsma and its inebriated punters the same kind of iconography as Leone's Westerns did to the saloon. It has become part of the cinematic language and Feher's films breathe the same rancid, nicotine air.

'Twilight' is a detective story that begins like an early Herzog film. It's hard to make out on the copy I have, but the opening looks like it's tracking above a misty forest. The bootleg quality only adds to the strangeness. The music at the beginning sounds like Popol Vuh or Flying Saucer Attack's more drone-based work, but even the audio on my copy is pretty shoddy. I'll leave it for someone else to give a thorough account. The purpose of my ramblings is to raise enough interest for these films to be discovered in the UK. I would have said 'fat chance' a few years ago, but what with DVD distributors such as Second Run DVD and Artificial Eye, who are putting out amazing stuff from central and eastern Europe, there is some hope.

'Passion' is even more miserable and seems to revel in its own sourness, which is a good thing. It seems odd that while Tarr is so revered, even in mainstream American circles, Feher's name remains in the shadows. Both directors manage to work with first-rate cinematographers. Gabor Medvigy's work on 'Damnation', 'Satantango' and 'Werckmeister Harmonies', coupled with Tarr's blocking is out of this world. I would go so far as to say that Medvigy is one of the best in the world. I don't know what it is about Hungarian and Polish cinematographers, but their sense of space, movement, focus and composition is formidable. Anyway, I'm getting sidetracked. The sheer unrelenting misery of these films mean that they might not be for everyone, but for any of you who have had the rare pleasure of entering a grocery store somewhere in Budapest, only to hear the cigarette-chomping owner mutter, 'mi a fasz?' (what the fuck?), roll the eyes and sigh loudly when you politely request to buy their goods, you won't feel alone when watching anything by Messrs. Tarr or Feher. If you put yourself into that mentality and keep repeating, 'the customer is always wrong', then there is many a dour joy to be had watching these films.

PS. Apologies for lack of accents.

Digital Limbo

2010-10-02T11:56:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, a colleague on the second film, visited me and took photographs of the city on his iphone, which has one of these retro instamatic applications on it. I've been somewhat sceptical about digital software that emulates outmoded film or audio machinery. When one sees video run through software to make it look like Super 8 or hears music that digitally attempts to recreate that WEM Copicat echo, the effect can be tantamount to eating an Asda version of a Jaffa cake. For all the bulk, hassle and cost of Super 8, I still swear by it. But I was blown away by what this iphone could do and am starting to wonder if I should eventually surrender to the digital sway when an application comes along for a convincing Super 8 look.

My Braun Nizo 136 XL has been with me for almost 21 years and is in serious need of repair. The difficulty in finding someone to fix the damn thing, the increasing cost of filming coupled with the fact that so many people are coming close to the same look with affordable digital technology is making me wonder whether I should bother with the repair or not.

Back in 1990, to have a Super 8 camera was to be out of time. Video was finally affordable and Super 8 became relegated to the back pages of the free ads papers and car boot sales. Maybe not in London, but certainly in Reading. Super 8 was over for the majority of local filmmakers, and although the salesmen in my local camera shops logically argued that the affordability of video tape would quickly compensate for the still prohibitive price of the cameras, I still had this notion that a Super 8 camera would give me some much-needed cinematic legitimacy even if it was 27mm short of the desirable gauge. What attracted me so much to the format was that the process of working was pretty much the same as 35mm, but also it had an otherness that video couldn't come close to. Video has no distance from what it films, whereas Super 8 has (for me, anyway) that much needed sense of alchemy. I can only speak for myself here, but clinical image clarity is the reason I tend to steer clear of HD, RED, D35, D5 and whatever else. I just respond more to images that have that sense of transformation on Super 8 and that's that.

I bought my Super 8 Braun Nizo 136XL Super 8 second-hand for £15 from a gentlemen by the name of Dennis Burke, at the Reading Movie Makers' Society in February 1990. I learnt quite a lot from attending their Monday night meetings at a church hall. Almost all the members were old men who took great pride in screening their lovingly made local documentaries with added library music and occasional live narration. The whole thing had this very endearing Oliver Postgate garden shed feel to it. The members of the society were very supportive of their one or two younger upstarts, but didn't want to encourage any film efforts that might be deemed wayward or 'avant-gardesque' as they put it. One of the older gents, well into his eighties, showed me his home Super 8 theatre and sold me his editing kit. Very good memories.

The Braun Nizo is very versatile. One can shoot stop motion, and a variety of eight different speeds from 1 frame to 36 frames per second. It's lightweight and small with a relatively wide zoom range. After seeing Derek Jarman's Super 8 films, I'd shoot at near time-lapse speed at 6 frames per second and later project at 3 frames per second, which gave an eerie, stilted effect, assuming the film didn't jam itself and burn in the projector. I edited to music by counting 18 frames for each second. That was the only way on these manual machines. Since I couldn't get into film school, messing around with this camera seemed the best way of learning.

In the early part of the '90s, you could still use Super 8 without having to take the train to London. Boots sold their standard Kodachrome 40 cartridges and even the adhesive for editing. For around £10, one could have developing included and send off the cartridge to Hemel Hempstead in the glamorous envelope provided. Any venture into black & white involved the great Henderson's lab in Croydon. Now, The Widescreen Centre in London are one of the last few beacons of hope for Super 8.

Compared to the cost of video or digital, £10 for three minutes that you can't erase is no joke. Now it's much more expensive. To buy, develop and transfer a three-minute cartridge costs around £30 in Hungary and far more in the UK. The blessing in disguise of all this is that it taught me not to be wasteful and only shoot if I'm sure. I recently did some shooting with Mark Gyori (Katalin Varga cameraman) with a RED camera and we paid the price in the edit room for that unlimited freedom that digital shooting gives you. All my years of austerity went out the window when I was let loose on a RED. We shot way too much footage simply because we could and the money we saved by using the RED, we lost by spending hours in the edit room.

It seems clear that digital will make film extinct and there is no doubt that it is quickly catching up in terms of quality. As long as digital shares the same grain and latitude as film and as long as the 2K or 4K or whatever K projection can support it, then there is no reason other than nostalgia to mourn film's passing. Film developing chemicals are pretty noxious and would definitely not be missed by anyone who actively cares for the environment. Having physically carried the 54 rolls of the 'Katalin Varga' 16mm rushes and more recently, the 5 reels of the final 35mm print through cities and onto trains and off again and suffered dire back pain after, I'd happily settle for carrying the film on one of those 2K projection hard drives.

More and more practicalities seem to be putting digital in favour. The strongest argument for digital is that it has empowered so many people who otherwise would never have had the chance to make films. I'm one of those middle-class types who can afford that £10 3-minute cartridge, so it's all very well for me to stick up for Super 8, but with so much legitimate rivalry from digital formats, it seems like inverted snobbery to look down on it. In the right hands, digital is not just democratising the industry, but aesthetically reinventing it. Just look at Philippe Grandrieux, who is a Rembrandt with the format. Some cameramen are also experimenting with old, uncoated Cooke lenses, but on RED cameras, which can offer the best of both worlds. 'How I Ended This Summer' by Alexei Popogrebsky was shot on RED and looks fantastic.

When I look back at past work of mine, I often wonder if mistakes could have been averted by using digital. We really screwed some of the night scenes in 'Katalin Varga' when we shot it and no amount of digital first aid could rescue the slabs of poorly-defined blackness in certain shots. I don't know if digital would have been any better for dark scenes, since we only had three lamps, but at least we'd know we have a problem on set instead of two months later after getting the rushes. No such thing as dailies on home-made films. We also went from Super 16mm to a digital interlace and then simultaneously onto 35mm and HD tape. We later went onto a 2K hard drive for cinema projection from the HD tape, whereas we should have gone from the digital interlace onto both 35mm and the 2K hard drive at the same time! If it's done properly, digital cinema does a pretty good job of making film redundant.

It seems like I'm trying to console myself for the eventual loss of my Super 8 camera, but still, I wouldn't deny some heartache if celluloid disappeared. My Braun Nizo camera has been through all kinds of adventures with me and I came close to losing it many times. The New York police owned it for a weekend in 1994 when I enjoyed a brief stint behind bars, and at that time, I never thought something as prosaic as the wear and tear of old age would put an end to my camera. Maybe Super 8 and its magical stocks will endure.
Kodachrome 40, Tri-X Reversal, Ektachrome 64T, Ektachrome 100D, Ektachrome Super 8 Color Reversal, Vision2 200T and 500T. I'm sure I've missed a few out, but these are the kind of products that are important enough to make one even keep the packaging. To make films in your bedroom on Super 8 felt covert. Even that wait of ten days to get your footage back seems very romantic in hindsight. Sometimes the anticipation was better than eventually seeing what you shot. There was a mystery to the format and the very camera itself. Braun Nizo or Arri SR3 16mm cameras look good and they were our equivalent of holding a guitar when we were teenagers. RED cameras in comparison look like space-age gun replicas from Woolworths. Saying all this, it's hard to know whether to move on and fully embrace the digital world, continue with the old way or just keep all options open.

With the affordability of digital and youtube, we're all filmmakers of sorts, and it does mean that some mindblowing films will be made completely independently by unknowns. That would be great as long as a fair structure is there to know about these films and see them without the filmmakers being bled dry by certain vampiric distributors, sales agents and producers. That seems to be the biggest obstacle for filmmakers now that the production side of making films has become a possibility. The means are there to make affordable great work simply with a D5, which can compete with the majors, but what education and support network is there for outsider filmmakers to know about the endless traps they can fall into once they're discovered? That's a whole other argument, so I'll put a sock in it now and sign out with no conclusion other than I clearly had nothing better to do today. With all these advancements, it's no wonder that some filmmakers such as Harmony Korine scrape the bottom of the barrel and wallow in the scuzziest VHS quality available.

As an aside and assuming we have a lucky tailwind, the second film should start with the dawn chorus early next year, so for now, it's back to teaching for me next week. However, my 'boss' on this film, Keith Griffiths has three films he recently produced, screening at The London Film Festival this month: 'Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives' by Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 'Robinson in Ruins' by Patrick Keiller and 'Surviving Life' by Jan Svankmajer.

The Bohman Brothers

2010-09-23T13:19:00.001-07:00

Here's something worth getting out of bed for: eight years after their confounding and downright inscrutable 'Purely Practical' single on my last record label, (described by The Wire's Byron Coley as 'one of the best sound poetry jukebox records since Henri Chopin stopped cutting them'), the elusive Bohman Brothers are returning with a full-length album on my new label, which will be even more unofficial than the last one.

Despite my 'Peripheral Conserve' label ending in tears in 2004, we're going to give it another bash on a discreet scale this time round. To avoid tripping over cardboard boxes at night and also the unfathomable, postal Bermuda Triangle that CD and vinyl packages all too often 'disappear' into, we'll be manufacturing very small editions, which will only be available at concerts. No distribution, no press and no money back. Due to limited time and money, only two albums are planned - 300 each and that's it. In other words, only send a demo if you're happy for it to be used as a beer coaster.

To pigeonhole the Bohman Brothers would be missing the point, only because they are the pigeonhole. Their Monday nights upstairs at the Bonnington quickly became compulsory for me and many others until music licencing laws put an end to all that. Their work and friendship has often seeped into the film projects I've been working on, and their effortless ability to create a whole, makeshift world of their own without any regard for trends or financial gain has been a benchmark that I and most other mortals have failed to reach. In an industry shuffling with pricks, who needs a therapist when you're privileged enough to take time off with such a well-tailored pair as the Bohmans?

Hopefully we'll have the album ready early next year, depending on various things including the second film, which bizarrely enough has (so far) restored my faith in human benevolence existing within some quarters of the film industry.

Prior to the recording of the album, the Bohman Brothers will be performing in London on November 5th with Blood Stereo as part of the Cut n' Splice event:

http://www.soundandmusic.org/activities/events/cut-splice-transmission

Adam Bohman will also be playing with Morphogenesis as part of this Los Angeles Free Music Society weekend in London sometime in October.

The Fab Four

2010-09-17T09:26:00.000-07:00

Cannes, May 1973. From left to right; Donald Cammell, Dennis Hopper, Alejandro Jodorowsky and Kenneth Anger.

Ben Hopkins

2010-09-16T02:56:00.000-07:00

Recently I read a review of the latest film by Ben Hopkins, 'The Market', which began with the line, 'Ben Hopkins is doing a Peter Strickland on us'. For a hardly house-warming 83-word review, the last thing Mr. Hopkins needs is comparison to someone he never knew of when making his film. It would be more appropriate for a 'Katalin Varga' review to take a swipe at me for 'doing a Ben Hopkins' on you. I wonder if people have already forgotten how vile UK films were in the late '90s. It was people like Guy Ritchie and his flea-bitten flock who made me spit on British cinema from 1998 up until the last few years, and Ben Hopkins was one of the very few saviour filmmakers mining his own path during that period.

For some reason, Hopkins' 'documentary', '37 Uses for a Dead Sheep' passed me by at the time and I only just bought it on DVD. If you, like the many millions of us, ever wondered what happened to the Pamir Kirghiz, then this film is for you. It's a really great work that never feels exploitative or intrusive, as is the danger with these topics. It's funny, heart-warming and packed with adventure. In other words, just like a Guy Ritchie film, but somewhat better.

It would be a great loss to British and European cinema if Mr. Hopkins didn't continue. It's the same old problem: it's not about the marketing or the box office, it's the legacy that counts. As one Hungarian auteur once regally noted; "my films will be seen by the same number of people who watch the latest Hollywood blockbusters. Only, it will take forty or fifty years for that to happen instead of one weekend. And most of those Hollywood films will have been forgotten by then."

Venice 2010

2010-09-16T02:17:00.000-07:00

This morning, a friend of mine, who introduced me to the films of Peter Tscherkassky ten years ago, told me that he won a prize for his film, 'Coming Attractions' in Venice this year. The only news that filtered through the British press on Venice mainly focused on the usual heavyweights and made scant mention of more peripheral forces, such as Tscherkassky or Patrick Keiller. I just tried to search most of the UK press on Tscherkassky's triumph, but more chance of finding a missing sock in the launderette than reading anything about this mystery award.

I first saw Tscherkassky's most devastating film, 'Outer Space' on VHS at a house party in Chesterfield in 2000. The friends in question were and still are actively disseminating his work. At the time, the film stood out from the glut of formalist academia, that might have been rich in ideas, but somewhat short on the impact of the sensuous and visceral American avant garde from the '50s and '60s. Somehow I forgot about the film until I saw it last year in the cinema and found myself undergoing the same kind of epiphany that born-again virgins experience. Whereas many short films serve as mere business cards, Tscherkassky's 'Outer Space' is an electric shock to the system - a singular, bloody-minded earthing of cinema's hidden voltage. There are quite a few websites that can describe its impact and its construction far more effectively than I can. But what makes me bow down is how the film manages to be both anti-cinema yet aggressively cinematic at the same time. Tscherkassky takes found footage from 'The Entity' and re-exposes Barbara Hershey's haunted, violated face through a kaleidoscopic meat grinder. The effect is both staggeringly beautiful and brutal. The film eventually folds in on itself and literally comes off the spool, no doubt causing many in the audience to shout abuse at the projectionist. The experience is somewhat similar to hearing My Bloody Valentine's 'To Here Knows When' for the first time on the radio and wondering what happened to the signal.

It's astounding that Tscherkassky doesn't get more exposure for this film and his work in general. This should be as high up in the canon as films by Jordan Belson, Stan Brakhage, Maya Deren or Kenneth Anger. Luckily, most of his work is available here:

http://www.index-dvd.at/

And no, I have no percentage on sales. Tscherkassky's Venice-winning film, 'Coming Attractions' is showing at The London Film Festival as part of the 'People Going Nowhere' section on October 21st (14.00) and October 24th (21.00). I'm already jealous of anyone who'll be going.

Sonic Catering

2010-07-01T05:50:00.000-07:00

Some minor twitches in the Sonic Catering camp.
Nurse with Wound are putting out a devastating, gong-drenched remix they did for us way back in 2001. The track is called, 'Hindu Monastery Breakfast' and uses source material that Colin Fletcher, Tim Kirby and I gave Steven Stapleton to mix in with his own sonic potions. We put out the track on our 'Artificial Additives' remix compilation in 2001, but this version coming out now is a different mix. 'Hindu Monastery Breakfast' will appear on Nurse with Wound's 'Automating Volume 3' compilation any week from now.

http://www.brainwashed.com/common/htdocs/discog/ud202cd.php?site=nww

Assuming we can get our act together, we'll be contributing a track for a vinyl compilation on the Greek label, Absurd. Run mainly by the crazed Nikolas Malevitsis from his bedroom in Athens, the label has been quietly pushing the noise envelope further and further out with stellar releases by Merzbow, Kapotte Muziek, Nikos Veliotis, Haters, Marc Behrens, Michael Northam, Mark Wastell, Reynols, Lionel Marchetti, Bohman Brothers, Michael Prime and our own Sonic Catering double live album, 'Live from the Canteens of Atlantis'.

There is talk of putting a selection of our Sonic Catering efforts onto one of those 'greatest hits..' things, despite the fact that we don't have any hits to speak of. We will see how it goes when the three of us meet for our annual summer barbecue in July.

Saturday Night

2010-04-23T23:03:00.000-07:00

I left this to the last minute, but if anyone is reading this in Copenhagen, I'll be playing records tonight at the closing party for the CPH PIX Film Festival at Pumpehuset from 22.oo until late. Other guests subjecting the public to their record collections will be Helene Cattet, Bruno Forzani - the directors of 'Amer', Matt Porterfield - director of 'Putty Hill' and also Touch regular, BJ Nilsen. More information about the whereabouts and tickets or if they're needed or not at www.cphpix.dk. I'll try to leave a toilet window open for anyone who can't get in.

Sophomore

2010-02-28T08:17:00.000-08:00

Futile as it is to even bother to correct misinformation and blatant lies that spread about work and personal life, I feel that I should bite back about some Chinese whispers that are revolving around a planned second feature film. To put a sock in it before it's too late, we're using the Revox B77 model for this film, NOT the E77. That was a rumour too wild. There is no such thing as an E77 Revox. End of story.

We spent a long time trying to find the right equipment to work on and we're still not quite there yet, but we're bringing in a 1398-A tone burst generator, a Heathkit AG 1o oscillator and a Maestro RM-1A ring modulator, which means we'll be throwing the computer out the window this time.

What else is there to say about the next film? The working title is 'Berberian Sound Studio'. We won't have fleas in our sleeping bags this time. Most importantly, if you get off on Luigi Nono, Luciano Berio/Cathy Berberian, Gruppo di Improvisazione Nuova Consonanza, Erno Kiraly/Katalin Ladik and The Bohman Brothers, then at least we'll be breathing the same air. If gore is your thing, then you might as well stand in line for a refund.

No

2010-02-04T01:50:00.000-08:00

This,

'The main theme, 'The Grave and Beautiful Name of Sadness' by Steven Stapleton and Geoff Cox in its original 21-minute entirety. Note that this will be included as a free CD with the first 1000 copies of the DVD'

will no longer be. Despite the best, generous efforts of Messrs. Stapleton and Cox, we couldn't convince others. 'The Grave and Beautiful Name of Sadness' can still be found on the CD, 'The Sadness of Things' by Steven Stapleton and David Tibet on the United Dairies label. Your best bet is e-bay. Excrement happens.

Paradjanov Season

2010-01-28T12:36:00.000-08:00

This is worth a bus pass:

http://www.paradjanov-festival.co.uk/

If you're in London this March, you could do worse than see a few of these films. 'Shadows of our Forgotten Ancestors' is a hardy perennial of a film, and its magic never rubs off. Hundreds of ideas encrusted within one film. It's a cause for celebration that the films are being shown in such an extensive retrospective.

Some recent discoveries through friends and acquaintances: a strange Romanian bout of exquisite misery in the 1971 film, 'Stone Wedding' by Dan Pita and Mircea Veroiu. I think they're also responsible for 'Lust for Gold', which I hope to see in a few days.
On the soundtrack front; the early '70s work of Bruno Nicolai seems to be up there with the best of Morricone before he discovered panpipes in the '80s.
If anyone knows how to get hold of films by Gyorgy Feher, I'd be interested. Apparently he is another 'yet-to-be-discovered by the West' jewel of a filmmaker in the vein of Zoltan Huszarik or Wojciech Has. Apparently. Even in Hungary, trying to track his films down is not easy.

Hungarian 'Katalin Varga' Poster

2010-01-27T07:30:00.000-08:00

This poster is very okay. It's designed by Barbara Panyiotidis, the wife of my best man. Barbara, along with the help of Apostolos Rizos, also did the festival posters for 'Katalin Varga', but not that British one. As mentioned in the previous entry, the film is close to its expiry date and I'll be glad to see the back of it. Behind the official recognition and razzmatazz, it's been a bitter twelve months since last February. Hopefully I won't be so naive next time. Again, encouragement from viewers has made it all worthwhile.

Katalin Varga on DVD

2010-01-21T02:07:00.000-08:00

'Katalin Varga' will come out on DVD through the Artificial Eye label on February 22nd. I've tried my very hardest to put everything on there in order to avoid coming back in a few years with cynical, rip-off special editions. Even though I've gone to a lot of effort, production values on some of the extras won't always have you in awe. Below is a list of extras:

1. Commentary with Ian Haydn-Smith and me.

2. 50-minute Super 8 Home Movies chronicling the location work and shoot from April 2004 - July 2006 with commentary by me. Sadly we wanted to have music only, but the clearance costs would probably exceed the budget of the film. A list of the intended music will be at the end.

3. 15-minute 'Making of' featuring video behind-the-scenes from the shoot and interviews with cast and crew reminiscing on good and bad times.

4. 15-minute interview with me.

5. 4-minute interview with sound designer, Gabor Erdelyi.

6. Deleted scenes.

7. Still photographs by Marek Szold.

8. The main theme, 'The Grave and Beautiful Name of Sadness' by Steven Stapleton and Geoff Cox in its original 21-minute entirety. Note that this will be included as a free CD with the first 1000 copies of the DVD.

I'm already kicking myself for not talking more about Doni the horse on the commentary. What struck me about Doni was his resemblance to Trigger, the horse that made the careers of both William Witney and Roy Rogers. I'm not saying for a minute that Doni could come even close to having the same screen presence as Trigger. For the record, Trigger had more screen presence than any other horse in film history. In fact he had even more presence than Roy Rogers himself. However, going back to Doni: he had a special place in my heart. He wasn't the best of actors and would often look into the camera. On the second day of shooting with Doni, we just decided to shoot him from behind and that solved any eye-contact problems. I spent some time before the shoot travelling just with Doni and his owner, Akos. Sadly, it was not so unusual for men in some parts of Transylvania to mistreat their horses, but Akos was always a gentleman with Doni. Doni's biggest problem was horseflies - sometimes black clouds of them chasing him as he galloped.

Because of the distances involved, it would have been unfair to make Doni travel so much, so we used horse doubles. We used three other horses to double as Doni and it was hard to shoot around them to disguise their differences. Often we'd just shoot the characters on the horsewagon and not focus on the horse.

I haven't seen Doni since we finished shooting in July 2006. This year I hope to return to his village and bring him, Akos and his family a DVD of the film. I might also bring them a DVD of a Western featuring either Trigger or that other great horse, Buttermilk, (although Buttermilk was too self-consciously flamboyant for my liking).

After February, it should be time to let 'Katalin Varga' leave the nest, so all of us involved can pull our socks up on future work. A colossal thank you to those of you that wrote or said supportive words. One can't put a price on that.

Peripheral Conserve

2009-11-23T09:45:00.000-08:00

Some record sleeves from the Peripheral Conserve record label days between 1999 - 2004. Fourteen releases incorporating CD, vinyl, pizza box and edible jam cakes. The only release that made money was The Sonic Catering Band's first album with the jam cakes from the recording. We only pressed 10 copies that had to be listened to and consumed within two days. Plenty of these records live a life in storage, but not a single regret. I worked very closely on the sleeve designs with John Forrester in Bracknell. Tim Kirby from The Sonic Catering Band often did designs. Jonathan Coleclough did the layout for the 'Continental Drift' CD. From top to bottom, the sleeves are for:
The Sonic Catering Band - 1093 Budapest, Lonyay u. 7, Magyarorszag (22.09.2002 19.45-20.52) released in 2002 on CD
D.R. Ragge and W.J. Reynolds - Entomological Acoustics (European Gryllotalpidae) released in 2003 on gatefold 7" vinyl
Clare Connors (with Colin Fletcher and Tim Kirby) - rehearsal tapes 1999/2000 released in 2003 on 10" vinyl
The Bohman Brothers - Purely Practical released in 2002 on 7" vinyl
Continental Drift (Eastern and Middle European Movements in 2003) - compilation album released in 2004 on CD
The Sonic Catering Band split single with They Came from the Stars, I Saw Them
- Disco Brunch/The Holy Mountain released in 2002 on 12" vinyl
The Sonic Catering Band - Seven Transdanubian Recipes released in 2003 on CD

The gentleman on the cover of 'Seven Transdanubian Recipes' is Mr. Pál Tóth who makes music under the guise of én as well as contributing to sporadic Sonic Catering recordings. He's also pencilled in with indelible ink for the next feature film, but that's a long way off...

Balkan Festivals

2009-11-23T07:46:00.000-08:00

Some great festivals recently in Serbia and Greece - the Free Zone Film Festival in Belgrade and the Thessaloniki International Film Festival. Great to see that the legendary Balkan hospitality is as warm and impartial as ever. Audiences at both festivals rammed themselves in to almost every screening.

I managed to catch some rare Herzog as part of a very comprehensive retrospective at the Thessaloniki festival. 'Bells from the Deep' is worth tracking down for the throat singing and bell-ringing alone.

Thessaloniki also paid great attention to the experimental movement in the former Yugoslavia. I missed the retrospective of Ljubomir Simunic whose '70s 8mm films from Belgrade were only shown twice outside Yugoslavia. A brief conversation with a convert alerted me not only to Simunic's work, but also to the fact that we still adhere to a surprisingly rigid Western hegemony when it comes to the avant-garde. If you're Anger, Kubelka, Whitney or Brakhage, the accolades and historical rub-downs are a given, but how about we begin to broaden the rummage for other filmmakers who have been neglected either because of geography or politics? The four Simunic films presented at Thessaloniki were 'Pression', 'Gerdy, the Wicked Witch', 'Summer Dreams' and 'Slavica's Expected Life Traps'. The catalogue describes how the films were 'shot and edited on camera .. and overwhelm with their abundance of imagery and musical rhythm. The images were painstakingly edited-in-camera over a period of 3 to 5 years, during which Simunic kept his double 8mm camera in the fridge to prevent the undeveloped celluloid from expiring. Found footage of the most amazing strength is hand-picked from his television set, becoming a document of viewing in mid-70s Yugoslavia as well as a train of thought, superimposed on his spaced out taxi rides.' A wretched stomach bug made me miss a whole compilation of '70s avant-garde films from ex-Yugo by a whole host of mystery names. That's what you get for dipping your snout in too many festival canapés.

A devastating concert by Jerome Noetinger and his Metamkine friends at the Alatza Imaret in Thessaloniki convinced me that the avant-garde is far from having been bled dry. Mostly eschewing modern technology, Noetinger used a reel-to-reel and a variety of contraptions integrated with multiple film projections. The film itself often ruptured, cracked and oozed its own psychedelic sap that only made way for new layers of light underneath. At times, the whole sound, image and space came close to capturing the cosmic rapture of Jordan Belson's work.

Finally, some personal mention should go to the festival in Thessaloniki. I applied to the Agora - Works in Progress section of the festival in 2007 after running out of steam on the rough cut of 'Katalin Varga'. I didn't hold much hope, but the film found a co-producing company because of Agora and in May 2008, the money finally came through to do the lab work and final sound mix. If you have a rough cut of a film, I would strongly recommend applying to Agora next year. Your film is given some legitimacy and the organisers do put you in touch with buyers and producers. It's mostly frustrating. People will blank you and then come shuffling back a few years later once your film starts burning gas, but it is working for filmmakers and that can't be said for most things. Even if it goes wrong, the Greek food is some consolation.

Between 9 and 5

2009-11-11T06:46:00.000-08:00

Here is a link to some answers I gave to fellow teacher, Matt Ellis for his Mokus-Pokus blog. I imagine an edited version will also be forwarded to a website by the name of expat loop? Strange that us Westerners get deemed as expatriates if we set foot in other lands, yet anyone coming to the West has to wear the 'immigrant' label.

I taught with Mr. Ellis several times in Austria and he also runs Pilvax Magazine, which is Budapest's only independent literary review. His Hungarian is also better than mine. Normally I shy away from reading interviews conducted by friends or colleagues, but hopefully this one doesn't have any of that rolling in the hay together sycophancy. It gave me a chance to talk at length about that evergreen conundrum faced by burgeoning film-makers: the day job.

http://www.mokus-pokus.blogspot.com/

Soundtracks

2009-10-22T07:00:00.000-07:00

Some soundtrack recommendations. I could easily fill the list with Morricone's scores up until his disastrous use of panpipes with 'The Mission'. His overlooked pre-soundtrack work with Gruppo Di Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza is also well worth listening to and is a valuable Italian counterpart to what AMM were doing in the UK during the '60s. Also not forgetting the work of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. Still plenty I hope to discover from the Italian world - Bruno Nicolai, Gianni Ferrio, Piero Piccioni and more.

Lubos Fiser - Valerie and her Week of Wonders
Popol Vuh - The Great Ecstasy of Woodcarver Steiner
John Cale/Terry Riley - Straight and Narrow
Phill Niblock - The Movement of People Working
Pierre Henry - The Love Life of the Octopus
Georges Delerue - Contempt
Serge Gainsbourg - Anna
Krzysztof Komeda - The Fearless Vampire Killers
John Barry - Walkabout
Ennio Morricone - The Bird with the Crystal Plumage
Goblin - Suspiria
Curtis Mayfield - Superfly
Zdenek Liska - The Cremator
Sun Ra - Space is the Place
Maurice Jarre - Eyes Without A Face
Paul Giovanni - The Wicker Man
Henry Mancini - Touch of Evil
Michael Nyman/Brian Eno - Vertical Features Remake
Throbbing Gristle - In the Shadow of the Sun
Nico - The Inner Scar
Ennio Morricone - Danger Diabolik
Bernard Herrmann - Taxi Driver
Steve Reich - Oh Dem Watermelons

Reading

2009-10-21T00:38:00.000-07:00

The Reading Film Theatre will screen 'Katalin Varga' on Tuesday, December 1st 2009 at 20.00. Since I worked there as a volunteer from 1991 - 1999, I'm over the moon to be invited back to answer questions or insults regarding the film. As with most of the great places in Reading such as the Progress Theatre and The Rising Sun Arts Centre, the Reading Film Theatre depends on volunteers to stay afloat. All these places have been run by selfless and committed enthusiasts who welcome others regardless of age or anything else and offer a vital alternative to the usual knock about on a Friday night. Please support these venues by seeing their films, plays and concerts.

www.readingfilmtheatre.co.uk
rft@reading.ac.uk
Palmer Building
Whiteknights, University of Reading
Shinfield Road
Reading
Tickets: Members, senior citizens and unemployed: 4 pounds
Non-members: 5 pounds 50

Katalin Varga Interview

2009-09-19T00:33:00.000-07:00

Below is an interview I did over e-mail with Panos Malevitsis for a Greek fanzine that sadly will not be published since the whole thing has folded. The interview is about 'Katalin Varga' and goes into more detail than usual about the film. The luxury of having time to answer questions over e-mail. A few amendments have been made.

You've spoken before about using elements of the rape-revenge genre. Could you elaborate?

Working within an existing genre allows you to instantly set-up expectations, so in that sense you already have a head-start in terms of how you can manipulate an audience. Any viewer expecting a rape-revenge will not get their money's worth, but hopefully that initial surprise or disappointment can prove enriching. Also working within a genre has its restrictions, which force you as a writer and director to push against those barriers. It's far more creatively stimulating to work within a set of rules or framework. If I asked you to write a story about a gourmet, his doctor and a mule on a raft, you'd probably come up with something. However, if I asked you to write about anything, it wouldn't be so stimulating. So to work with existing rules and archetypes allows you to perhaps subvert them or at least put the humanity back into archetypes. The music that I really respond to also works within restrictions, and I think there is far more creative freedom when you place those barriers upon yourself instead of just indulging.

There's also this feeling that so much has been done on this subject yet we still have so far to go in terms of what we can communicate about it. Some viewers have been angered by the fact that the rapist in 'Katalin Varga' is portrayed so sympathetically. That doesn't necessarily mean that I as a person or as a filmmaker have forgiven him. The crux of this set-up was to 'stay out of it' because as soon as I give my opinion whether in interview or blatantly onscreen, the audience potentially don't think for themselves so much. It really was essential to avoid anything didactic. If the assailant continues to act like the assailant, the audience potentially haven't engaged. So the set-up is there to disappoint and ultimately reward. By not showing the rape, by not having any closure and by not having the 'bad guy' be the bad guy that you want him to be. It is human nature to want bad people to remain bad, so we can justify our condemnation. Some people don't want to be proved wrong! It is frustrating both for the viewer and for Katalin that someone who did something so terrible can be so reformed, but sorry for the cliché - this is life, and how do we deal with this? The film does turn this question on us - our judgement or sense of justice as an audience. Who administers justice? What point of view do we adopt? - Katalin's justice, traditional legal justice, divine justice, audience justice, justice of the other characters in the film? If we had made this film from the point-of-view of 'the police' fella who kills Katalin at the end, it would be a 'happy' ending. He doesn't know why she killed his brother-in-law. For me, those two characters are in harmony at the end. He feels as fully justified as her.

The aspect of revenge is also a hall of mirrors and I also wanted to show the collateral damage. The Gergely character is a sleaze and he's not remotely endearing, but usually we as an audience wouldn't consider the consequences of his murder. As soon as we and Katalin hear that he has kids, the dynamic changes. It should be stressed that although this might be a lot of fun to write with all these shifts, this is real life. The film is not realistic at all to me, but the emotional truth within is. I'm only presenting a logical consequence of events that one would encounter in real life if taking a path of revenge.

Revenge is the one crime that will always be a grey area. It's the only crime that pretty much every human could consider. It's a crime full of contradictions both politically and religiously and it is relevant. It's an endless labyrinth and if I knew the answers, I wouldn't have made this film.

Another aspect of the film that frustrates an audience is the lack of motivation on Antal's part.

I would imagine that often there is no motivation for some crimes. That's very hard and scary to deal with as a victim. I could have hinted at a motivation, but with one explanatory sentence you open up the film to an argument that I didn't want the film to go in. You look at many street crimes now and the liberal view is to find a motivation or reason, which can act as a euphemism for an excuse. The classic one is to find something wrong in the family of the perpetrator, which is most likely true. However, if that somehow pardons the perpetrator and it's the fault of the father, why don't we look at the grandfather - and what if he was a tyrant? And so on and so on. How far back are you willing to go to account for criminal behaviour and with whom does responsibility lie? This film offers a viewpoint to the degree of stating that a transgression is a transgression and it begins at that point and can't go back to someone's background. Maybe Antal's character has or had some 'complexities', but if I gave him a motivation it would have been a didactic act and I fear that once that happens, the audience might allow the film to do the thinking. With this film, it works if the audience are lost in the dark of their own judgement.

You took the unusual step of not showing the rape.

I find that so dubious when films show a shocking rape and yet they're inviting you to potentially get off on it. The audience are then no better than the Gergely character - just standing by and watching a woman being raped. Ultimately it was a moral question for me as well as a formalist one. For me, there are other ways to convey violence. Why do filmmakers always, always use the same hammer? They only up the ante with more blood and more inventive sadism. The effect is at best numbing. War footage on TV doesn't shock anymore. I thought that I could make a very cinematic scene by using very uncinematic devices. Pretty much everyone was against the lake scene with Katalin describing the rape when it was in the script stage. Even when shooting, crew members were complaining how boring it was! It was a fight to keep it in. The usual accusations - it's too long, no flashbacks, no music, it's just a talking head and I'm using words instead of images. Hilda was full of doubts because nobody liked it, but that is my favourite scene. This film is riddled with faults and bad memories, but that scene is very okay. Hilda (Katalin) was phenomenal. It was a very difficult monologue to bring some life and bitterness to. Mark Gyori (cameraman) got it just right. I was on another boat fending tourists off. Hilda and Mark had some row about the scene and maybe that enhanced the nervous energy. It took us hours to get going, then it started to rain. I felt like giving up. I wanted it to rain during the whole shoot and usually nothing, and the one scene where it would have been ridiculous for rain, it happened. After the take, Mark gave me this beaming grin and put his thumbs up and we rowed as quickly as we could to go back and look at the monitor. Even on this tiny thing it looked beautiful, but we still had a lot of work to do on it since the sound was unusable because of an accident.
I showed that scene to a friend who often watches violent films with bad language. With just two or three graphic words in that lake scene, he was almost angry with me for being so repulsive. That's when I knew I hit the G-spot. If I can make an audience reconnect with their capacity to be shocked with only a few words, then it's a good thing. There isn't a drop of blood in this film and it's not because we couldn't afford ketchup.

Could this be seen as a feminist film?

I don't see it that way. The main character happens to be a woman and she does what she does, that's all. I don't see the film in gender terms. The film is quite harsh on men - pretty much every man is unpleasant in some way, but again, that's how it ended up.

This film could be potentially caught up in arguments revolving around gender and race, but I'm not interested. I was attacked for manipulating tensions in the region between Romanians and Hungarians. I don't see how that can be. A Romanian character defends the honour of his Hungarian brother-in-law - how can that be manipulating tensions? To a Western audience, they don't even realise that two languages are being spoken. Many think it's all Romanian, which is fine. The film is not about language or ethnic differences.

What frustrates anyone working in Eastern Europe is that there are countless examples of great cultural cooperation between countries that are supposedly 'enemies', but if you have one idiot in any of those countries who attacks someone of another race, that story is amplified by the media out of all proportion and becomes so counter-productive and just creates more tension. The media should highlight all the positive stuff that happens between different ethnicities because most of the time, that is the case. It was great that this was a film with me (half-English, half-Greek), Hungarians, ethnic Hungarians, Romanians and Slovaks. That is the way forward and many other films do the same. That should be celebrated. And the question about what is the nationality of the film is so redundant. This is not The Eurovision Song Contest. Film is far more fluid than sticking to one nationality. I'm not exactly the first to do this, but these questions keep coming up. I know that's a huge tangent from the 'feminism' question.

As an outsider, how can you make something your own, having filmed in Transylvania.

It's strange because of course I'm happy if someone considers the film true to their culture. However, it's not a comment on how people live. First of all, I have no right to comment on anything beyond my observations and secondly, I went to Romania countless times and found it incredibly civilised. Of course, it's very tough for friends of mine there to survive financially and nature often is a brutal force in terms of the elements and insects, but those characters in the film, you could find them anywhere. Romania was a location and it was used because of its look and 'mythology' and also simply because I knew and trusted the actors. It's understandable that an audience will look for authenticity if an outsider makes a film in their region. I would do the same if an outsider made a film in Reading. And I am taking elements that are authentic to that region, but I'm only making concessions to a point. For it to work, it has to be my world, it has to be amplified, heightened and larger than life. But it can work. That's not for me to say on this film, but an outsider can bring out the magic in places that locals can't see. A great example of that is Pawel Pawlikowski's 'My Summer of Love'. In a way, I feel that I respond to locations as an outsider. A bigger challenge for me would be to make a film in Reading. I feel I'm so familiar with it that I don't have the tools to bring out its magic. There's also the other thing in that I'm half-Balkan myself. Even though I grew up in the UK, my mother, her family (Greeks and ethnic Greeks from South Albania) and her friends were incredibly different from my English father.

Working in Romania as someone who grew up in the UK is difficult. You do have to accept that not every country has the same need for meticulous organisation as the UK or Germany. The word 'Balkan' is often used as a pejorative, but there are far, far more positive elements than negative ones. It could be chaotic for sure, but on the plus side, people were incredibly open, generous and warm. There is also a joie de vivre that you don't often find in the UK.

Could you comment on the strange mixture of religion and paganism, especially with the animals.

I think both forms of belief can exist in one head and in one film. Being half-Greek, our identity could be seen to revolve around the schism between the paganism of ancient Greece and the Orthodox Christianity of the Byzantine era. There is a superficial element involved where these things are there to add colour and frame the film with some kind of larger canvas for what is a very ugly story. From the very beginning, I was playing around with different elements of the fairy tale - the forest, the lake and so on. The writing tends to naturally flow into those spaces and you find things without intending to. That is the beauty of writing - often it isn't planned. It can take you to places instead of vice versa. Sadly it doesn't happen so often. Anyway, the two elements do merge as the creatures of the forest do act as messengers from God in Katalin's head. Catholicism is something very central to that part of Transylvania and you have to engage with it on some level. It can serve as an elevation and transport one's very personal troubles into something beyond the characters and beyond the audience. There is transcendence, whether one believes or not.

The benchmark for me was Sergei Paradjanov's 'Shadows of our Forgotten Ancestors'. He blended Orthodox religion, folklore and paganism into such a natural and exhilarating film, and it is something very rich for the audience to work on, but also something very relevant to Eastern and Southern Europe.

The most fascinating thing for me about religion is doubt and the whole film is thrown into that shadow. The searching for that answer or that absolution is what has driven so much great art - be it literature, music, painting, film. The artists who really felt religion were the ones who doubted it, but never rejected it. Firm belief in anything is dangerous and just look at the world around us now. This film is neither an attack on religion nor an affirmation of it. It does perhaps wag a finger at those who use religion for their own ends. There is a mentality in some people that they can atone for sins every Sunday morning, no matter how badly they've behaved.

How do you feel now that the film is out there?

I feel much better than I did in 2007! That was a black hole of a year. When Libra Film financed the sound and lab work in May 2008, it was a huge relief. Tudor and Oana Giurgiu saw the rough cut and were the first people to believe in it. The strange thing is that whatever happens with a film, there is always a weight on your shoulders. As an amateur, a certain weight is taken off your shoulders, but of course a new set of weights are put on instead. I was somewhat naive to think that you can make a film without a weight there. It doesn't have to be a bad thing. On a personal level, all this has been a shock - to go from a complete, total failure to what is happening now. This film was in total shutdown from September 2007 - May 2008. During that time, I grew to accept its failure and then suddenly it gets picked up. It does take time to adjust between those two extreme emotions. You can't suddenly jump in the air with joy when you've been ridiculed and rejected for 16 years. It does take time. But it's okay. I'm very lucky. There are so many great films at festivals that just disappear and it is tragic. For me, just to keep working is the best. I still have my normal life and my teaching in between films. Waiting for the next time to work is hard. I love the work and I miss it, especially the sound. For some it's the editing, but for me, the sound is really when it comes to life.

What about the next project?

It's in development now with the UK Film Council. Keith Griffiths from Illuminations Films is producing. We're extending a few things that we only touched upon with 'Katalin Varga' - the equestrian stuff and the sound especially. We only went so far with that film and I think cinema has so much further to go in terms of sound, and I don't mean in terms of effects, plug-ins, 6.1, 7.1, 110.1 and so on. There is just so much scope in terms of how you can use sound and silence with and/or against the image. I'm thrilled that the script has had this support so far and certainly it's a very different kind of writing. The writing of 'Katalin Varga' was an act of aggression itself, but it becomes bad for the health after a while.

Addictions

2009-07-18T23:12:00.000-07:00

Shadows of our Forgotten Ancestors - Sergei Paradjanov
Mirror/Stalker - Andrei Tarkovsky
Allures - Jordan Belson
Straight and Narrow - Tony and Beverly Conrad
Outer Space - Peter Tcherkassky
In the Shadow of the Sun - Derek Jarman
Flesh/Trash/Heat - Paul Morrissey
Street of Crocodiles - Brothers Quay
The Cremator - Juraj Herz
The Night of the Hunter - Charles Laughton
Eraserhead/The Elephant Man - David Lynch
La Soufriere/How Much Wood Would a Woodchuck Chuck? - Werner Herzog
The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant - Rainer Werner Fassbinder
Raging Bull/Taxi Driver - Martin Scorsese
Walden (Diaries, Notes and Sketches) - Jonas Mekas
New Old - Pierre Clementi
Viridiana/Belle de Jour/That Obscure Object of Desire - Luis Bunuel
Satantango - Bela Tarr
Eaux d'Artifice - Kenneth Anger
Szindbad - Zoltan Huszarik
The Man Who Fell to Earth - Nicolas Roeg
The Movement of People Working - Phill Niblock

Hermovo ucho

2009-03-22T04:12:00.000-07:00

The Hermes' Ear group exhibition curated by Jozef Cseres continues this year in Brno, Czech Republic. I contributed a small exhibit - 'Delegate Requirements for Kyoto Protocol' which conforms to the ear-themed dictates. Other exhibits are by Alvin Lucier, Keith Rowe, Alvin Curran, Al Margolis, Morgan O'Hara, Ben Patterson and Paul Panhuysen amongst others. The highlight of the exhibition for me will be Alvin Lucier - known for his 'I am Sitting in a Room' and 'Music on a Long Thin Wire' albums. I just wish I could be there.

Brno House of Arts, Dominikanska 9, 602 00 Brno, Czech Republic from March 26th 2009 - April 26th 2009. More details about the opening and gallery hours at www.dum-umeni.cz

Bear Necessities

2009-02-20T06:00:00.000-08:00

Silver Bear - Outstanding Artistic Contribution

We filmmakers, sometimes we forget the power of sound to create atmospheres and more often we use it in a predictable way. There's a tremendous originality and risk in the experimental and original way this film builds up its somber narration around its powerful sound design.

We give the Silver Bear for an outstanding artistic contribution to

Gábor Erdélyi and Tamás Székely

for the Sound-Design of

Katalin Varga

by Peter Strickland

The above is taken from the official Berlinale website. Considering that the sound design proved to be the most arduous, frustrating and long-winded process in the whole film, (two aborted alliances with sound mixers and more than a year of on/off post-production sound), I was overjoyed to shake Gábor's hand, slap him on the thigh and see him receive this award. However, looking at the credits you'd be mistaken for wondering why just Gábor and Tamás? A multitude of people contributed sound for this film and how does one fit all these names on one small, silver bear? I spoke with both Gábor and Tamás at length about how to properly credit all involved and all three of us agreed that although only two people can act as the public figureheads of this award, it is intended for all.

As Zoltán Karaszek (the on-set sound recordist) graciously pointed out yesterday when he called Gábor to congratulate him, 'I and the others just collected the vegetables, whereas you were the cook.' Many of us contributed to the overall sound whether by ideas or handing over recordings and, to use a pejorative, it was unanimously a team effort. Both Gábor and Tamás stress this. Although they and I are tremendously honoured with the award, we are aware of the unusual circumstances under which this soundtrack came to fruition. I spoke with Steven Stapleton last night, and he said that both he and Geoff Cox were overjoyed. In theory, he could contest this award as so much of the 'music' he and Geoff gave us could be misconstrued as sound design, but of course, it is not being contested.

To whom should this award go? For me, it doesn't really matter. We're all part of the film and I went to great effort to make sure everyone was credited correctly. On a personal level, I think Gábor is hugely deserving of this award as his great work has been often overlooked. It was a pleasure and an honour to work with him and György Kovács for what was a very magical month.

If you look on the internet, we have supposedly won best sound, soundtrack, sound design, etc. The Berlinale are making it clear that it's an award for sound design, but since the boundaries between music and sound design in this film are very blurred, I feel that some kind of notice needs to exist about how it all came together. Over the past few days, certain unsavoury rumours have been spreading regarding the rightful owner of this award. So without further ado, here is more than all the information you need about how the sound was put together. It's here in print from me. If you read information elsewhere, you would be wise to question its legitimacy. I'm quite stunned by how many people don't. Of course it's impossible to quash every false piece of information that appears in the press and on the internet, but since so many are responsible for the sound, it seems necessary to do this.

The sound recording dates back to summer 2004 when I travelled to Transylvania with Clive Graham and a DAT recorder. Clive's poultry, insect and goat bell recordings were later edited and layered by Zsolt Kovács and me, and consequently used in the film. Several friends sent sound recordings in the post: Roj (Richard Stevens), Tim Kirby, RR Habarc, Jim Backhaus, Dan Hayhurst, én (Tóth Pál) and Jean-Michel Van Schouwburg. Some of these were made for the film or were already pieces of existing music that I thought would work. I also went through my record collection and took existing music by Adam Bohman and Nurse with Wound. Nurse with Wound's 'Ciconia', which dates back to 1982 was used in its near-entirety for the suicide scene. Some people regard this as the highlight of the film's sound design, but it is actually a 'song' from my record collection used in the film in the same manner as say, Kenneth Anger using The Paris Sisters for his 'Kustom Kar Kommandos'. The theme music is again by Steven Stapleton from Nurse with Wound featuring Geoff Cox. That track, 'The Grave and Beautiful Name of Sadness' dates back to 1991 and was originally a soundtrack to a film by Steven's wife, Diana Rogerson.

The recordings I compiled were further manipulated with the assistance of various friends: Milan Malík and Péter Szabó. Zsolt Sőrés lent me his shortwave radio for the cheese/traffic report scene. I used my minidisc to record Raluca Sava delivering a traffic report and my mother talking about Greek tragedies. Roj specially made a traffic report jingle for the film, mixed it with Raluca's voice and almost two years later, all this along with the shortwave was mixed by Gábor and György. Some tracks ended up as ringtones, others were layered with several other pieces. The mountain shot that segues into the night shot of Katalin prior to her arrival in Jadszereda consists of music sent separately by én and Roj along with a sample of Nurse with Wound's 'The Schmürz' - all mixed together.

During the shoot in July 2006, Zoltán Karaszek recorded the sound with a Roland R4 Edirol four channel hard disk recorder at 48 kHz, 16 bit. Dezső Gálfi held a Sennheiser MKH 416 shotgun microphone in MS stereo mode to record dialogue, live music and some incredible atmosphere pieces - more goat bells, frogs, etc. For remote scenes, a Sanken clip-on mic was used along with a Sennheiser radio transmitter.

Between May - September 2007, we did the sound post-production in Bratislava, but the working relationship deteriorated. A similar story in the spring of 2008 with another sound designer in Budapest. The two gentlemen concerned are more than capable of doing the job, but we amicably parted company on both occasions because of 'differences'. During that time I tried to get my hands on some scops owl recordings. The birds emit a haunting submarine-like hoot that is very distinctive. No owls sounded during the shoot and a recording I later made on minidisc was unusable. Having previously released entomological recordings through The British Library's National Sound Archive on my home record label, I knew that they would have something special. I booked myself in for an afternoon to listen to their archive of scops owl recordings and eventually chose a remarkably clear piece recorded in Cserepfalu, Hungary a few villages away from where my girlfriend comes from. Dr. Alan Burbidge very kindly loaned his piece along with a roe deer recording for a modest price.

Between September 2007 and late April 2008, the film went into hibernation and I moved back to my mother's in Reading to find a job. When Tudor Giurgiu called in April to say he had the money, I was overjoyed and quickly set about finding a third sound mixer who would be suitable. György Kovács, known mostly for his work on Béla Tarr's films proved to be the ideal match. I spent two weeks working with him, Gábor Erdélyi and Tamás Székely on a provisional mix. After a break, we worked together for an additional two weeks to hone everything. It was a high point of my life - just to have the luxury of working. I rushed to the studio every day with a rucksack full of sound files, music CDs and minidiscs along with 29 CDs of Karaszek's on-set recordings.

György mixed the levels on a 24-track mixing desk and Gábor used Pro Tools to assemble the material. Tamás mainly cleaned-up the dialogue, took over on sound design if Gábor was missing his wife, and engineered some dubbing scenes (as did János Hajdu a year before) with Hilda Péter. György, Gábor and I brought in some of our own sounds into the film - György's field recordings of bells, wind, dogs and so on, Gábor's ambient pieces and my work with Tim Kirby, Colin Fletcher and Dan Hayhurst of The Sonic Catering Band. The trick was, with this wealth of material, to make the whole soundtrack cohesive.

For the foley, we spent one day at MaFilm Audio studios with Gábor Fogarasi and Emma Mikes to do footsteps, dancing and fly-swatting.

Due to lack of finances, we could only afford a basic, analogue Dolby SR (3.1) mix.

Reference points were Luc Ferrari, Popol Vuh, Faust, Nurse with Wound, Francisco Lopez, Alan Splet and the wildlife recordings of Chris Watson, Jim Reynolds, David Ragge, Richard Ranft and Jean-Claude Roché.

I'm still thrilled that Gábor was in Berlin to collect the award and I very much hope that he and Tamás will not only work with me in the future, but with many other directors. We are already planning a second film together. György Kovács is highly deserving of the award too and his name has now been added for the Silver Bear. His work is faultless. Anyone who needs proof, just watch a group of villagers scraping metal along a dirt road for minutes in Béla Tarr's 'Sátántangó' - it's harder than Merzbow or The New Blockaders. However, at the end of the day, one can only fit so many names on a small bear. So, an ideal bear would read thus:

Sound Mixer - György Kovács
Sound Designer - Gábor Erdélyi
Sound Engineer/Editor - Tamás Székely
Sound Recordist (on-set) - Zoltán Karaszek
Boom - Dezső Gálfi
2nd unit sound recordist - Clive Graham

The following people assisted with sound conversions, preparations and other technical hocus pocus:
Zsolt Kovács
János Horváth
Milan Malík
Péter Szabó

Foley - Gábor Fogarasi
Foley - Emma Mikes
Foley engineer - Dániel Gábor

Dolby encoding engineer - Miklós Vida

First ADR Engineer - János Hajdú

Provisional sound designer - Tomas Greso

The following people sent sonic contributions in the post:
Roj (Richard Stevens)
Tim Kirby
RR Habarc
Jim Backhaus
Dan Hayhurst
Attila Kozma

We used music or samples of music by:
Adam Bohman/Clive Graham
The Sonic Catering Band
Nurse with Wound
Jean-Michel Van Schouwburg
én
The Csávás Band
Csaba Fazekas, Lóránd Szabó and Elek Gergely
Gábor Erdélyi

The scops owl and roe deer recordings by Alan Burbidge played a huge part in the atmosphere of certain scenes, as did the field recordings of Zoltán Karaszek and György Kovács.

Dr. Erdélyi Gábor assisted with technical advice and the affordable studio rates.

And last but, by no stretch of the imagination, least:

Steven Stapleton and Geoff Cox.

PS - The Sonic Catering Band are not signed to Rough Trade or any label and Steven Stapleton is in Nurse with Wound, not The Sonic Catering Band.

2009-02-08T01:43:00.000-08:00

WORK

In answer to the question: 'How did you come out of nowhere to get into the Berlinale?', please read on. Most of this work wouldn't have been possible without the involvement of many talented and unsung people. All of the theatre, film and music below was frantically made with friends between the years of 1992 - 2008. Although some of it should best be left forgotten, all of it is relevant to 'Katalin Varga' - the one piece of work that is currently basking in a modicum of publicity.

Theatre
METAMORPHOSIS - adapted from Franz Kafka's novel and directed for Reading Progress amateur theatre in July 1992. (UK)

Short Films (as Writer, Director, Producer)
RISING WITHIN THE REALMS OF SLEEP - 1992/3 Super 8, 5 minutes, UK
BETWEEN GOD AND INSPIRATION LIE HEAVEN AND HELL - 1993 Super 8, 8 minutes, UK
RELAPSE - 1993/4 Super 8, 10 minutes, UK
FALL-OUT (aq) - 1993/4 Super 8, 10 minutes, UK
BLOODSHOT - 1994/5 Super 8, 1 hour, USA
BUBBLEGUM - 1995 16mm, 15 minutes, USA. Starring Holly Woodlawn, Nick Zedd.
LOVE'S SORE LEGION - 1996/7 Super 8 triple projection, 10 minutes, GREECE
A METAPHYSICAL EDUCATION - 2003 16mm, 4 minutes, HUNGARY. Starring Karoly Hajduk.
BERBERIAN SOUND STUDIO - 2005 Super 16mm, 1 minute, HUNGARY.
Starring The Bohman Brothers.
KATALIN VARGA (HOME MOVIE) - 2006 Super 8, 50 minutes, ROMANIA. Made with Marek Szold.

Feature Films (as Writer, Director, Producer)
KATALIN VARGA - 2006-8 Super 16mm, 82 minutes ROMANIA. Starring Hilda Peter, Norbert Tanko, Tibor Palfy, Melinda Kantor, Laszlo Matray, Roberto Giacomello, Sebastian Marina. During post-production, co-produced by Tudor Giurgiu and Oana Giurgiu.

Music

THE SONIC CATERING BAND's first recordings and dishes were made in November 1996. From then until August 1999, Colin Fletcher, Tim Kirby, Jon Fletcher and I worked away both in private and public until we were ready to release the following recordings.

The First Supper: Edition 1(Appetiser)
'meet ... The Sonic Catering Band'
tracks: 1) Prelude to an Empty Stomach 2) March of the Incisors
10" vinyl in an edition of 500, (250 blue vinyl, 250 plain)
recipe: Savoury Mushroom Canapes
released: August 1999 (Peripheral Conserve pH-01)

The First Supper: Edition 2 (Soup)
'The Sonic Catering Band ... report from an Alimentary Zone'
tracks: 1) Peristaltic 2) Nootka-tone Ensemble
10" vinyl in an edition of 500, (250 red vinyl, 250 plain)
recipe: Borsch Soup
released: October 1999 (Peripheral Conserve pH-02)

The First Supper: Edition 3 (Main Course)
'The Sonic Catering Band ... pay tribute to the Heimlich Manoeuvre'
tracks: 1) Dada Cuisine 2) Metabolica
10" vinyl in an edition of 500, (250 orange vinyl, 250 plain)
recipe: Tofu Royale
released: January 2001 (Peripheral Conserve pH-03)

The First Supper: Edition 4 (Side Dish)
'The Sonic Catering Band ... open the Electronic Lunchbox'
10" vinyl in an edition of 500, (250 green vinyl, 250 plain)
tracks: 1) Fast 'n' Pectic 2) Bile Duct
recipe: Kohlrabi
released: February 2001 (Peripheral Conserve pH-04)

The First Supper: Edition 5 (Dessert)
'The Sonic Catering Band ... hit Denny's'
10" vinyl in an edition of 500, (250 white vinyl, 250 plain)
tracks: 1) A Sedimental Journey 2) (I Hear a) Cookie Monster
recipe: Lebkuchen Cookies
released: March 2001 (Peripheral Conserve pH-05)

The Sonic Catering Band - Cold Turkey;
Michael Prime - Saturnalia
Double A-Side 7" Xmas single in an edition of 250, (white vinyl)
recipe: Xmas Pudding
released: December 1999 (Rund Um Den Watzmann 011)

The Sonic Catering Band - Bodypop;
Saloon - Impact
Double A-Side 7" split single in an edition of 500
recipe: Popcorn
released: May 2001 (Glamour Puss CAT 001)

Frostbite
One-sided 7" clear-vinyl single in an edition of only 57, available exclusively from the Forde Gallery, Geneva. Each edition of the single has unique artwork on the disc label ranging from paintings to mini-sculptures (click left to view).
recipe: Lumb's Ice Cream
released: November 2001 (Peripheral Conserve pH-07)

Kitchen Utensil Ploy
Interculinary Dimension
2 track 3" CD single in an edition of 1000 (free with Things Magazine)
recipe: Unspecified Balkan Salad + Soup
released: December 2001 (Things/Peripheral Conserve tH-2001)

The Sonic Catering Band - Disco Brunch
They Came from the Stars; I Saw Them - The Holy Mountain
Double A-Side 12" split-single in an edition of 500 (plain vinyl)
recipe: Vegetable Crêpe
released: May 2002 (Peripheral Conserve pH-08)

The Sonic Catering Band
Live in Linz - Popkorn
Mini CD (SPRCD002)
Limited Edition : 50 on fellow Sonic Caterer, Tim Kirby's smallprint label
2008

1093 Budapest IX., Lónyay u. 7., Magyarország
(22.09.2002 19.45-20.52)
1-track CDR album with cake in an edition of 10
recipe: Hungarian Jam Cake
released: September 2002 (Peripheral Conserve pH-09)

Live from the Canteens of Atlantis
Double CD Live album in an edition of 477
released: June 2003 (Absurd #30)

Seven Transdanubian Recipes
1. Covert Feeding
2. Table Manners
3. Lactic Sugar Dream
4. Greed
5. The Alimentary Canal by Night
6. The Lamb is the Light Thereof
7. The Oven is the Night Thereof
CD album in an edition of 500. Clear jewel case with 14 page booklet. Additional sonic and culinary contributions from Dan Hayhurst, Colin Potter, Zsolt Kovács, RR Habarc, Pál Tóth, Zsolt Sőrés, Jozef Cseres, József R. Juhász, Ádám Csenger Kata Pető, Réka Acél, Gábor Szakács and János Horváth.
released: November 2003 (Peripheral Conserve pH-13)

SONIC CATERING COMPILATIONS

Artificial Additives
Sonic Catering remix digipack CD album in an edition of 1000
The Sonic Catering Band - Supplementary Phase
Nish - Foie Gras
They came from the Stars; I Saw Them - Cosmic Seafood Fusion
Gregory Kurcewicz & Daniel Hayhurst - Composition No 1
Clear Spot - Flavour X
en-eye - Audio Noodles (Bombay Mix)
Nurse with Wound - Hindu Monastery Breakfast
Clare Connors - Grace.
recipe: leftovers from The First Supper series
released: July 2001 (Peripheral Conserve pH-06)
re-released: April 2002 (Peripheral Conserve pH-06)

Various Artists - I've Never Thought You Would Had Done It...
(a wedding compilation)
CDR album in an edition of 100
Tu m' - Soundtrack For A Day
The Sonic Catering Band - Sugar Nocturne (recipe: Wedding Cake
Ferran Fages - Portabel feedback systema
Archery Target - Rehearsing a wedding
Archery Target - Reveling a wedding
Mark Wastell - Who's Who
Howard Stelzer/Jason Talbot - Wedding March - August 2002
Alfredo Costa Monteiro - Transitivity (micro music #9)
Logoplasm - El fuego de los dias
John Hudak - The wedding gift
Brent Gutzeit - Beach/Forest
Wheaton Research - Daydream
Jason Kahn - Amsterdam/Zurich
released: September 2002 (Rossbin)

Various Artists - Overdub Atmo C
Electrelane - I Want To Be The President (Bang Bang remix)
4 treck - Stick Vs. Tric
Carlo Fashion - Octet For Microwave
Telstar Ponies - Amazing Grace
Richard Youngs - Oceanic Days
David Grubbs - Show Me Who To Love
Patrick Phelan - Give
Rafael Toral - E.B. ring
Spy F & The Zakulas - Fightin' (instrumental)
Chessie - Daylight
Wilt - Of Z Bygone Time
Drekka feat. Anaphylaxis - The First Hundred Seconds
The Sonic Catering Band - White Light from an Oven Above
(compilation CD free with issue 13 of Overdub in an edition of 2000)
released: April 2003 (Overdub)

Originally the label, Peripheral Conserve, was only there to serve Sonic Catering releases. From 2002, I persuaded the following people to join ranks.

The Bohman Brothers - Purely Practical/Western Omelettes
7" single in an edition of 150
released: September 2002 (Peripheral Conserve pH-10)

Clare Connors - rehearsal tapes 1999/2000
1) July 1st 1999, London N7
2) April 27th 2000, London N4
10" single in an edition of 150
released January 2003 (Peripheral Conserve pH-11)

D.R. Ragge and W.J. Reynolds - Entomological Acoustics (European Gryllotalpidae)
1) Gryllotalpa gryllotalpa
2) Gryllotalpa vineae
7" heavy vinyl single in an edition of 300
released March 2003 (Peripheral Conserve pH-12)

Continental Drift (Eastern & Middle European Movements in 2003)
CD compilation album in an edition of 400

1. Vox Turturis - Osculetur me
2. Lengow & Heyermears - "Knee-puff" Mix
3. Iftaf (Institut für Transakustische Forschung) - Coffee
4. The Rudas Baths (Budapest, Hungary April 2002)
5. Zsolt Sorés - Ossification (Tilos Radio edit)
6. József R. Juhász - Welding-song 2003
7. Zsolt Kovács - Where are all the Dead Snails Going to? (Halott Csiga Blues Part 5)
8. György Galántai - Metal Music (excerpt)
9. Keleti Station (Budapest, Hungary April 2002)
10. S.K.? - Angersonixmix (6 minutes and 66 seconds from Angersonix)
11. The Bohman Brothers - Bohmans' Fifth Hungarian Rhapsody
12. Rana ridibunda (Eger, Hungary March 2002)
13. Abstract Monarchy Trio - Himmel über Budapest (live …)
14. Alergische Platze - excerpt from 3000 seconds
15. Kopott - Levelek N.-Hez
16. The Lazy Anarchists - Relaxation with The Lazy Anarchists
17. R.R. Habarc - Felho
18. Choir practice (Gyor, Hungary September 2002)
19. én - op. 30524 (foníx. 1)
20. Kata Peto - Elment az én rózsám
21. Dragibus - Kanaria song
released: January 2004 (Peripheral Conserve pH-14)

Solo Music:
Typewriting Aloud Typoxxs Allowed
CD compilation album on the Hermes Discorbie label 2003
1. The Lazy Anarchists - Manifesto 2002: Part 1
2. tEóRia OtraSu - Hy-ph-ol-op-ho-ny
3. Gen Ken Montgomery - Spacebar - 32 lines
4. Jozef Cseres - Post-phenomenological P.F.
5. Paul Panhuysen - Wheels of Fortune and Engines of Love
6. Carl Stone - Pad See Yeuw
7. Brandon LaBelle - Over/Here
8. Adnan Balcinovic - anal-og type thing (part 1)
9. én - I. Op 20915
10. Michael Delia - Two P's. Too Loud
11. S.K.Y. - Just Naked
12. Peter Strickland - Party Fever
13. gal - enelten
14. Al Margolis - Smith-Corona Electra XT
15. The Lazy Anarchists - Manifesto 2002: Part 2

Other Film Work Assistant on SKIN FLICK (UK, 1998) - directed by Bruce LaBruce Nondescript Hotel Barman in MUNICH (Hungary/Malta/USA, 2005) - directed by Steven Spielberg

Feature Scripts
THE JACKDAW HANDBOOK - 1997
THE TURKEY LINE - 1999
THE OPPONENT - 2004
KATALIN VARGA - 2004
FORGET NOVE ZAMKY - 2005
FORGET TARZAN - 2005
BERBERIAN SOUND STUDIO - 2008
IN AND OUT OF SYNC - 2008
JULIANNA - 2008

Exhibitions (as The Sonic Catering Band)
.. in no time whatsoever, Manfred and Geert's dinner guests adeptly steered the conversation towards the intricate subject of aural hygiene practice..
2006 for the Hermes' Ear exhibition in The Nitrianska Galeria, Nitra, Slovakia