the 1st annual Hackney Film Festival

The 1^st Hackney Film Festival took place on the 18^th and 19^th of September in venues around Hackney, it was organized by a group of young filmmakers and film enthusiasts with the intention to celebrate the borough and all the talent that they see there a daily basis. The weekend at the HFF was eclectic and fun and the events were completely independently run, “funded entirely by the community” – as Steve proclaimed in his final thank you’s!

A festival that should’ve existed given the reputation of Hackney and its artist residents didn’t before this. Now, 2010 has marked the first annual HFF. Made up of three events, it was a two-day festival that covered a scope of film and video related work. The only criteria for those wishing to submit films was that it would be produced by Hackney-based artists and filmmakers. This inceptive year was an extensive celebration of the visual talent and communal thematic interests coming out of the borough.

The first screening took place at the majestic Rio Cinema on Kingsland Road. The “red carpet” event of the Festival opened the two days drawing in “film-heads” from all over London. There screened nine diversely formatted short films: narrative film, conceptual animations, explorative documentaries, music-lead experimentals, factual, surreal, and thought provoking.

The Festival opened with Kingsland, a 21minute narrative by Tony Grisoni. A screen-writer who has worked on a number of widely received features including “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas”, he had recently turned his attention to the plight of asylum seekers from Afghanistan in his film “In this World”. Here at the HFF, Kingsland profiled a young Kurdish man trying to make it in the Turkish community’s underground work force of Dalston Kingsland. Ethnic differences within the community itself leads to the harshness of the greater east London realities. A powerful film that marked the seriousness of the Festival it just opened.

Pleasantly surprised, each of the films showed was of a very high technical, aesthetic and content caliber. But the impressive diversity of cultures portrayed through the films was very warming and showed a different prospective to what is popularly seen as arty, trendy Hackney, and that is its historical and contemporary ethnic wealth. “Schlamozeltov!” looked at the Jewish concept of luck with beautiful photography and captivating narration; “Suburban Madness” took the audience to the Carnival of Brazil where a group of psychiatric patients joined in the gray area that makes the street party of Rio: between the strand of Brazilian tradition and the harmonizing properties of drum beating mayhem is the madness of it all. “The Lost Coin” attempts to give a lesson in life through its 4minute journey to various worlds through the various animation styles: a quirky and inventive delight with an unexpected ending.

After the screening, the HFF moved down Stoke Newington to The Others to present a different dynamic of what film and video art offers. Moving away from the narrative, a line up of Hackney-based audio-visual artists performed their music to their own accompanying visuals. Between acts, the screens projected original historical footage of Hackney (put together by my self) furnished by the Borough of Hackney Council Archives. These films silently portrayed grand national and local historical events throughout Hackney such as the 1953 Coronation festivities, 1946 Victory Day parade, some town variety shows and a regal visit from the Queen also circa 1950. The event showcased a great contrast of projections between cool contemporary video art and archival history-on-film.

The night dwindling into major party effects kept people reminding each other that there was more to come the next day!

And come it did, at The Drop – an open room with a large screen downstairs from the Three Crowns Pub on Stoke Newington High Street. Another charged up screening with people at the back on their tippy-toes squirming to see above the heads behind the seated audience. The modest room was packed with people trickling up the stares. Again, an eclectic choice of films ranging from music-based animation, dramatic cartoons, filmed mind trips, a comedy about the Grim Reaper in love, and so many others. Among the visually and emotionally striking ones was the heart felt film, “Chasing the Dragon”. An ex-heroin addict speaks to the camera, allowing himself to be filmed living his life and sharing his story about how he helped himself and now others recover from addiction by caring for nature. Also a local from Shoreditch, Paul, the protagonist of the film’s, presence at the festival confirmed a type of life that breathes in and out of film: its production, modes of storytelling and finally, affirmation through its reception.

The team that lead the event had a great art-and-community based synergetic aim in mind that played out beautifully. The planning, designing, curating and outreach were impressively executed for something that was purely and completely by the people who live and work in Hackney. The neighborly support was overwhelming. It was the common murmur among the attending crowd that next year’s Hackney Film Festival should definitely pick up on this and grow.

visit the official webpage: http://www.hackneyfilmfestival.com/

see more pictures of the event on the Hackney Film Festival FlickR page.

pinholes from the Manama Suq

Arabic & Eastern movies at the London Film Festival

Last year was a very, very good year for Arabic films at the BFI London Film Festival with more than 10 films from the region screened. This year, is not as plentiful - there are only three. I am interested in seeing all of them.

Stray Bullet (Lebanon) - Set in the opening days of Lebanon's 15 year-long civil war (1975-1990), Stray Bullet is a gripping, twisty psychological drama with a devastating emotional sting in the tail. Noha (Nadine Labaki) is a bride-to-be in the final stages of preparing for her marriage to a man she doesn't love. When her former lover and fiancé comes back from a lengthy absence, it sets off a chain of events that turn the lives of Noha and her family upside down. Against this intimate depiction of family life, director Georges Hachem also makes a powerful statement on the debilitating effect of war, particularly civil war, as neighbours turn against each other with disarming ease and seemingly ordinary people find themselves capable of committing acts of unspeakable evil. Nadine Labaki, whose 2007 directorial debut Caramel, in which she also starred, remains the most successful Arab film in recent years, puts in an astonishing performance as the vulnerable, wounded Noha.

Microphone (Egypt) - When Khaled returns to Alexandria after years of travel, he discovers his attempts to rekindle a relationship with an old love and repair his relationship with his ageing father are both futile. His life turned upside down, he now aimlessly roams the water-bound city until he stumbles upon Alexandria's underground music scene, a secret world filled with hip-hop singers who perform on sidewalks, female rock musicians on rooftops, and graffiti artists who confront the city with their shocking murals, created in the darkness of the night. If director Ahmad Abdalla's previous film Heliopolis, also starring Egyptian leading man Khaled Abol Naga, was a meandering, nostalgic paean to a lost Cairo, Microphone is an adrenaline-fuelled, infectiously dirty homage to Egypt's irrepressible and uncertain future. Infused with a similar counter-culture spirit to Bahman Ghobadi's No One Knows About Persian Cats, Abdalla's latest film is a riveting look at an under-reported scene, as Egyptian youths joyously collide Eastern and Western musical influences to create a unique and captivating sonic kaleidoscope.

Outside the Law (France/Algeria/Belgium/Italy/Tunis) - Rachid Bouchareb changed French government policy with his 2006 film Days of Glory, about the North African soldiers who fought for France in World War Two. Featuring three of that film's leads, Outside the Law is a follow-up rather than a sequel - and has proved no less provocative, outraging French right-wingers and leading to the presence of riot police outside its Cannes premiere. Bouchareb's subject is the FLN, the Algerian liberation front that helped bring about that country's independence. Largely set in Paris in the 50s, the film follows three Algerian brothers who become involved in the FLN's underground campaign in France. Soldier Messaoud (Zem), scholarly Abdelkader (Bouajila) and morally compromised wideboy Said (Debbouze) are the brothers, with Bernard Blancan as the cop whose ruthless covert organization, the Red Hand, is out to crush dissent. An impassioned polemic is conveyed in the language of a turbo-charged mainstream thriller that mixes political drama of the Costa-Gavras school with hard-edged action à la Michael Mann. One of the year's most significant French films, and a compelling work from a masterful storyteller.

Staying in the Eastern region India has a high numbers of releases this year: 6 films covering a gamut of themes.

One that I hope to see is Just Another Love Story - the synopsis reads like a powerful pull to the confines of transsexuality in Indian film. Making it more impactful are that the lines here blur between fact and fiction and their daring reflection on the man playing the role.

Another one is the latest film from women's rights researcher Kim Longinotto. In her latest movie Pink Saris, she looks into the situation of women of the Gulabi Gang of the untouchables caste resisting the ideology of their role in society.

And finally, set in torn Kashmir, Autumn looks at a conflict seldom encountered in cinema.

Ironically, there is only one film from Iran, Orion, which has a synopsis of what now reads like the generic film from Iran: Woman gets damned - see how woman struggles. Not to undermine the theme, but it was expected.

Other categories seem promising this year: the experimental, the archival, the documentary, the shorts and more events.

all links, above synopses, and images from the British Film Institute London Film Festival website. take a visit for full info.

Urban Africa at the Design Museum

I just made it to the Urban Africa exhibition the Design Museum! I'm glad I did, I definitely gave it pluses for a few reasons despite leaving feeling like something was missing. I thought it was perhaps the lack of analysis or informative depth. In either case, I did enjoy it and the exhibition did resonate an affect.

The show was set up in three parts. The first room, something like the introduction room, had printed the artist comments on the wall. David Adjaye is a practicing architect who went out of his regular work routine to put together images that he had taken for the past ten years of capitol cities of Africa. A great breadth to this project, he had visited every capitol of the continent, except Mogadishu, stating that the colonial and war aftermath of Somalia is still too raw and much too painful to visit and display. “Stimulated by lack of research about urban context in Africa”, his aim to show these African cities in a format in which they have not been presented. The African continent is seldom shown in a way that presents a ‘regular’ everyday life in this part of the world; rather, Africa is consistently shown alongside famine, war and safari. Adjaye hoped that by showing these urban areas in the context of global cities, that people can see Africa in a global context.

The first room also displayed maps of the continent pointing out the various social and geographic elements such as climates, terrains and languages.

The next room had five ongoing slide shows. With five screens (working, out of six) playing simultaneously, they were each designated to a particular area of Africa. Unfortunately, the ‘Maghreb’ screen was not working.

The third and most impactful room was long and painted red. It was laid out by separating each city, with information on its population, the population of the entire country, its GDP, and most interestingly, when it was independent from whatever European colonizer it was under (except in Sudan’s case – I hadn’t known that it was under Egyptian colonial rule until 1956!) The pictures attributed to each city were put together in something of an image-bundle, though separated by civic, commercial and residential architecture/areas.

Among the main aspects I enjoyed the about the exhibition was the casual feel to the images. They did not have overly exciting photographic value, they were printed in regular snapshot size, and the points of view were varied. Some were clearly taken from the front seat of a car.

But I was also excited by the scope of the project. There were many, many pictures (not sure how many) and they depicted such an array of spots: taken from foots of mountains, looking at landmark statues and outside public service places (public toilets). They also presented a range of vernacular hut homes, to shantytowns, to governmental buildings of more modernist shapes, gated communities. Among the themes I found most interesting were the landmark statues, most of which were placed in the center of traffic roundabouts. There were many that resembled the style of Arabic landmark statues, such as arbitrary tower like structures and flag ribbons connecting into handshakes or swords (post-colonial landmarks?). But then there were a few that signified African slave history: the one that caught me the most was a large scale sculpture of a man raising his arms having just broken the chains on his wrist. I suppose this was interesting to me as I have seen many works looking back at African slavery in the West, but never thought of how slavery is remembered and conveyed in Africa.

A very interesting exhibition, and one that allowed me to link Gulf architecture, not the super starchitect, bling architecture of today, but the protectorate-influenced modernist architecture from the 50’s – 80’s to another area of the world. It is interesting to me to see these buildings that were very reminiscent of exactly the architecture of ministries in Bahrain and Kuwait and even hotels of Doha, showing me that these buildings’ style, subdued and somewhat plain are not unique to the Gulf region alone.

The amount of images in the show was impressive. But unfortunately, it did seem to leave a bit more to be desired. As one critic put it, the manner of display didn’t allow for the uniqueness of each city to come through, a point I took to as my two friends seeing the exhibition with me failed to see the differences of the cities or the relevance of displaying them each without noting unique properties of each. The show also came short of the ‘study’ aspect, providing an inner look at what lead the cities to reaching where they are today, a point that I would have like to see more of, though the dichotomy of my opinion lies in that I was also very attracted to the simplicity of the display.

As an exercise for looking at the urban African space and seeing them in worldly context as the artist statement had implied, I enjoyed the show and am looking forward to the published catalogue coming out at the end of the year.

Bamako, Mali

Abidjan, Cote D'Ivoire

both images are by David Adjaye, taken from London Design Guide

Asia Alfasi

from AsiaAlfasi.com

I recently came across the name Asia Alfasi while reading about collaborative production programs (but that’s a whole other story): another good name to add to the area of Arab, Islamic, bilingual comics by women (a very short list). Sounds like just my tea cup!

Her style is very influenced by manga cartoons that she watched as a kid in Libya. She mainly uses her comics to address differences and similarities between cultures and ethnicities in a cosmopolitan environment. Taking much from her own experience being a Libyan in Birmingham who, at the time of arriving, couldn’t speak English, she creates her stories so others in a similar place could read and relate to.

Back in the end of 2006, Asia had a wall size panel of her strip as part of Thin Cities, an exhibition – on the Underground – that celebrated 100 years of the Piccadilly Line. Artists were commissioned to, through their medium, showcase a “different part of London”.

Asia set out to create a semi-biographic narrative about her first time on the Tube as a kid and how diverse the Tube has now become. A very sweet and simple story that tells us not to fear being judged, but rather to enjoy the ‘symphony’ of our differences.

Asia Alfasi also won the StripSearch competition in her year, and by now, her works have been included in The Mammoth Book of Manga.

read more here