Category Archives: Special Events

One More Time with Feeling: Interview with Andrew Dominik

One_More_Time_With_Feeling
One More Time with Feeling

Seen at Venice International Film Festival, Venice (Italy)

Format: Cinema

Release date: 8 September 2016

Distributor: Picturehouse Entertainment

Director: Andrew Dominik

UK, France 2016

112 mins

The Australian filmmaker talks about working with Nick Cave, directorial tactics and his favourite song from the new Bad Seeds album.

For one night only, on 8 September 2016, Andrew Dominik’s beautifully moving and sad documentary will give audiences around the world a special opportunity to hear songs from Skeleton Tree, the latest album from Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, and see a glimpse of how it got made. The project originally started off purely as a promotional film to support the album release, but ultimately turned into something bigger, much bolder and undeniably richer, mainly driven by the emotional trauma Nick Cave found himself in after the death of his 15-year-old son Arthur in July 2015.

Like Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard’s recent documentary 20,000 Days on Earth, which offered an intriguing and highly original look at Cave’s life, One More Time with Feeling is anything but a standard take on the great artist and his irresistibly captivating music. From experimenting with mixing 2D and 3D black-and-white cinematography, to the shrewd staging of the songs, and Cave’s magnetising voiceover, Dominik (Killing Them Softly) manages to not only capture the artist at work but encourages him to gradually open up about his emotions and the sheer bewilderment and haunting grief that surrounds him and his family since the terrible ‘accident’ (a word that Cave himself doesn’t use easily). The result is illuminating and as deeply affecting as the music itself: fragile, fragmented, powerful and utterly poignant to its hauntingly dark core.

Pamela Jahn talked to Andrew Dominik at the Venice Film Festival earlier this week, where the film had its world premiere.

Pamela Jahn: The original brief for this documentary was quite different to the final film. How did it come about?

Andrew Dominik: Basically, the original idea was to just do some sort of live event that would be shown in a bunch of theatres, but Nick didn’t want to do it, maybe because he thought it was too much pressure, and so they decided to make a film instead. And he originally just asked me if I’d shoot the songs from the record, like a performance or something. But that would have only added up to 35 minutes, so we had to put other stuff into this, and what that other stuff would be we didn’t really know. It all happened quite organically. I knew obviously that the film had to deal with the trauma, because that was really the only thing that was happening, or that was the thing that was under everything. It was just a question of how directly we would deal with it, because as a friend, you don’t want to go too much into it, but as a filmmaker you’ve got to try to get to the subject matter at hand, and I kind of felt that that’s what he wanted me to do, that that’s my job, and so that’s what I did. And then the film took shape little by little. I came up with the idea of the voiceover, because Nick’s life is this swirl of activity, but at the centre of that he disappears into whatever goes on inside him, and I felt like we needed that to be expressed. But I didn’t want it to be polished. Nick is always controlling and I wanted to get in the way of that, so he could reveal himself.

Did you have any arguments?

Yes, all the time.

About what?

Nick doesn’t like to wait around, and he didn’t. For example, when we were going [to the studio] to shoot overdubs, he wouldn’t tell me when exactly he’s going in to do a take, because they’re trying to fool themselves that they are not working. It’s more like, they’re going to do something that happens to be recorded. Because he doesn’t want to deliver anything, he just wants something to happen. But you can imagine from an organisational point of you that’s a fucking nightmare, when the guys are not even going to tell you when it’s happening. And especially with 3D, everything is difficult. Even if you just want to change a lens, it takes an hour. So all I wanted from him was some indication about what’s going to happen during the day, and he wouldn’t give it to me.

At some point early on in the film Nick asks you, ‘Is this some sort of directorial tactic?’ – Was that true, did you actually have a tactic when it came to directing him?

I do believe in difficulty, I believe in making things difficult for people, because they reveal themselves when you do that. But it’s not malicious or deliberate. I don’t try to manipulate people but I am naturally manipulative, depending on the person. You have to basically adapt yourself to every person that you deal with. Nick, for example, is very suspicious, he’s not trusting necessarily, and he’s a very impatient person and he sees all sides of things. He’s actually a relief to deal with because he’s really bright and he understands what you’re doing structurally. But at the same time, Nick is anxious because he wants to get to the studio to start working on the record, and he’s got to wait around because we’re fucking working out this camera in the car, so at that point you mentioned there, he was serious. He thought I was trying to slow him down to provoke a reaction from him, although I wasn’t.

The title is part of a song from the new album. Whose idea was that?

It was my idea. It’s just a superstition really. I looked at all the music documentaries and all the ones that were good, the title was an action: Don’t Look Back, Shut Up and Play the Hits. So we just went through the songs and this one seemed to make sense.

How do you perceive Nick Cave has changed since what happened?

He’s like Nick, but more so. He says himself that he’s a lot more compassionate. I think he always was compassionate, but he used to be a very armed person, he was never afraid of making things difficult for other people and I think he’s a lot less like that now. And he’s a very ambivalent person, but I am not sure that’s changed, but he’s certainly much more patient with people than he used to be.

It’s said in the film that women are more 3D. Do you agree?

Yes. There is much more depth to women than men. And also, when you are dealing with actresses, they have a lot more speed. If they were like a bike, men have got three speeds and women have got like 15 speeds.

Was it clear from the beginning that Nick’s wife Susie would talk to you as well, and be in the film?

No, and it took a little bit of convincing. But I thought, his family is his life, I mean he goes on tour but at the end of the day he’s a family man, and every time you talk to Nick half of what he says is about Susie and the kids. So it didn’t really seem possible to make a film about Nick without including Susie. Also because what happened didn’t only affect Nick and it didn’t just affect Susie and Earl, it affected everyone. So to not hear from them would have been weird, I think, because it happened to them.

Which track from the new album is your favourite?

I think I like Jesus Alone the most, the first one. Because it’s real, I mean, they’re actually recording it as we shoot it, and the other songs are performed. So purely the one I think I captured the best was that one, probably. But I do like them all really, because ultimately they all mean different things to me.

Interview by Pamela Jahn

Skeleton Tree is released worldwide on 9 September 2016.

Watch the trailer:

George and Mike Kuchar Ace Space Double Bill

Sins of the Fleshapiods
Sins of the Fleshapoids

Format: Cinema

Date: 19 December 2014

Venue: BFI Southbank

Part of Sci-Fi: Days of Fear and Wonder

A rare screening for two oddities from Underground cinema stalwarts the Kuchar brothers: Mike’s 16mm effort Sins of the Fleshapoids (1965) and George’s Orphans of the Cosmos (2009). Fleshapoids is a 43-minute science fiction epic set in a future where the human race has become self-indulgent, depraved and lazy, lounging about on couches and waited upon by artificial humanoids the ‘fleshapoids’. The plot follows one of the latter, Gar (Bob Cowan), as he rebels and flees slavery to pursue his lover in the palace of Prince Gianbeno (George Kuchar) and Princess Vivianna (Donna Kerness), a couple locked in passive-aggressive war, who are going through their own crisis of infidelity. Mayhem ensues.

Fleshapoids is a riot of plastic jewellery, draped fabric and thrift shop tat repurposed to depict a future world of luxuriant decadence. As in much of the Kuchars’ output an old-school Hollywood glamour sensibility rubs up against their low-rent hairy-arsed tin foil reality. This is a sub-poverty row production shot entirely in Bronx interiors, cast from whatever local male and female hotties could be persuaded into it, in rich colour, but without synchronous sound. It has the innocent ‘let’s put on a show right here’ amateurism you might expect from such a youthful production, but also displays a flair for composition and lighting, and a sheer ambition that lifts it out of home movie status. There is a certain defiant swagger to it, utterly unreal but unconcerned, happy to use a painting and a few pot plants to suggest a palace exterior if they’ll do the job. It’s hard not to feel a certain delight when the narrator intones, in his best ‘welcome to the world of tomorrow’ voice, that ‘humans now live in a true paradise!’ as the camera moves over the plastic fruit and leopard skin to settle on the glitter-sprayed cast, who acquit themselves with varying degrees of enthusiasm. Cowan’s Gar moves in your traditional ‘I am a robot’ jerky fashion throughout (which none of the other fleshapoids do), George Kuchar is a vision of five and dime resplendence, and the script, (delivered through on-screen speech balloons and audio narration) runs the gamut from over-ripe to melodramatic and back again. The ending is outrageous and stupid and rather sweet. It has charm.

Orphans of the Cosmos was made by George Kuchar some 43 years after Fleshapoids, and is, objectively, pretty terrible on any technical level you would choose to judge it. A project made at the San Francisco Art Institute with his students, it tells the tale of some ambitious teens with their hearts set on a mission to Mars, who achieve their goal through dope money funding, only to unleash an extraterrestrial attack in the process.

Cosmos seems at times to have been assembled from the worst (only?) takes that George could get, so that flat readings, fluffed lines and quizzical looks off camera are de rigueur. The lush grain of 16mm has been replaced by video, but not high-end digital video, no; this appears to have been shot with the same camera and software package usually employed by the creators of cable television adverts for Crazy Larry’s Used Furniture Warehouse. Thus every other scene will be framed into hearts, or covered with symbols, or kaleidoscoped into fly’s eye vision. Occasionally this is used to some narrative purpose, but it often feels like he is using every setting on the menu randomly, possibly to win a bet. The thrift store aesthetic here continues in the extensive use of toys to stand in as zoo animals, spaceships and Martians, though the combination of these together with cheesy digital FX becomes increasingly confusing. Indeed the whole thing is a lot less coherent and a lot more repetitive than much of his previous output, and, frankly, the last 10 minutes or so of this 40-minute meisterwork had me baffled.

All this said, it’s clearly a bit of a goof, assembled in a hurry with whatever resources were readily to hand. The patented fruity Kuchar dialogue still raises a smile, and there are some disarmingly terrible musical interludes. I watched the whole thing with a feeling of tickled bemusement. It doesn’t fit the pattern or share the aesthetics of anything else in contemporary American cinema, but nor does it look like it cares. So, godawful then, but kind of fun.

Mark Stafford

La Freak Smut Cinema: Interview with Missy and Messy La Freak

La Freak Smut Cinema
Kiss (La Freak Smut Cinema)

La Freak Smut Cinema

14 May 2014

Looking Glass Cocktail Bar, London

La Freak on Facebook

When you enter the shabbily glamorous Looking Glass cocktail bar on Hackney Road, there is no way of knowing that behind the huge gold-framed mirror next to the bar hides a door to a secret room. As twenty-odd people wait to be let in, sipping on inventive, albeit pricey cocktails, there is a simmering sense of anticipation. When we are finally invited to step behind the looking glass, each guest is given a cheerful welcome spank on the bum by the vivacious Messy La Freak.

This introduction into the dark screening room with its mismatched sofas and tattered vintage chairs is apt: the atmosphere at La Freak Smut Cinema, a midweek female-friendly porn film night run by two young mothers and self-described ‘sex geeks’, is joyfully naughty, risqué but relaxed. The good-natured audience is composed mostly of couples, a few single men, and pairs or groups of female friends.

Set to music throughout, the programme starts with cute animated shorts by Naked Love, and two classy films by Erika Lust about masturbatory bondage and a sexual encounter dreamed up by an obsessive lover, mingled with La Freak’s own compilation videos. As the evening progresses the material becomes heavier, with, among others, a Japanese gay animé that is typically both sentimental and rude, as well as the BDSM-orientated Discipline. The latter is an accomplished example of La Freak’s style: a striking juxtaposition of artistic, beautiful, enigmatic images and saucy, explicit, provocative material that feels fresh, surprising and arousing.

During the show, Missy La Freak and Messy La Freak keep bouncing around, a glass of wine in their hands, charmingly enthusiastic, open, approachable and willing to engage with their audience. The evening is a success: after the films, the room buzzes with collective exhilaration, and people linger on at the bar to chat animatedly. Missy and Messy beam: their job is done.

A week later, I met the cerebral, artistic-minded Missy and the boisterous, spirited Messy La Freak to talk about porn, art and feminism.

Virginie Sélavy: How did La Freak start?

Messy La Freak: I broke up with my long-time partner and I was experiencing a very high level of sex drive. I always had a fantasy of going into a sex cinema. I had that idea of putting on a fur coat, having a little cigarette outside, having a glass of red wine, watching some porn, not doing very much, and then going home and having a massive session. But that is not what happened at all. I turned up at this place on City Road that I’d looked up on the internet. There was a sign that said ‘Women go for free’… I went downstairs and it was the most revolting film ever, with a quite large lady covering herself in cream. I put myself in the back row and before I’d even counted to five every single man – I was obviously the only woman – in the entire room lunged at me like zombies! I ran out, it was ruined. A few weeks later I met Missy. And two years later we were sitting in her house drinking red wine and we were talking about porn.

Missy La Freak: We discussed the story and we talked about how London doesn’t have a sex cinema that women feel comfortable going to. That was the seed. The seed was that women should be able to go out, enjoy something sexual…

Messy: …in a non-threatening environment.

How did you find your current venue?

Missy: They found us. They contacted us on Twitter.

Messy: Our venue hunting has been a big nightmare.

Missy: You’d think London is very liberated. London is not liberated.

Messy: There’s such a taboo about porn. We’ve had lots of problems. Normal places won’t take us. They have to be slightly edgy or slightly underground.

Missy: Advertising was a problem too. For a year it was a truly underground event because we weren’t really listed. We tried flyering for the first night, but it’s difficult to flyer for a porn night. There have been points where we have considered quitting. We were thinking, is London ready for this?

Who comes to your nights?

Missy: In the beginning it was for women, but it’s open to all now. It’s for all sexualities, genders, backgrounds, ages. It’s for people who want a good time and a friendly atmosphere. The first night we chatted to people to get some feedback, and the group of people who were the most interested in La Freak were women in their 40s and 50s. They were so in touch with their sexuality, so ready for a night like La Freak. That was wonderful.

Messy: Normally about half of the room is heterosexual couples, and the other half is pairs and groups of ladies, a few straggler guys, and sometimes we’ve had straggler girls.

It felt geared towards women more than anything else, for instance Wank was all about female masturbation. And He-Man was great because it wasn’t just about sex, it was also about the beauty of the male body.

Missy: We are trying to have a more artistic view of sex. In the beginning, although we were trying to take it away from the mainstream view of sex, there was a lot of cock count, whereas now there’s more artistic erotica. We feel that it makes the real sex more powerful to have it cut up with more artistic films that tease you, that don’t show you everything. Wank was one of our first films, and it was when we were very much thinking about women. Our thought was, when you hear the word ‘wank’, everyone thinks of men, and men talk very openly about it. We wanted to discuss female wanking and celebrate it.

Messy: The reason why we’ve moved away from classifying ourselves as something not necessarily feminist, but female, geared towards women, is that it’s boxing yourself in. You alienate half of the demographic. We are feminists but, unfortunately for our species, there are a lot of women who are fearful of the word.

Missy: We found that the association with the term has put some people off. It’s unfortunate but we want the night to be open to everyone.

Muff felt like a celebration of pubic hair.

Missy: That was a direct ‘fuck you’ to mainstream porn where the muffs are removed so you can see more vagina.

Messy: A lot of men prefer pubic hair, so I think it is just for that reason – so you can see more.

Missy: It’s such a slippery slope, now you have porn stars having their bits lasered off, because once you can see more, then you need to create the perfect vagina. It’s pretty grim.

One of the films was a Japanese gay animé.

Missy: I love it, that’s the one that turns me on the most. The idea of showing animated stuff was really interesting to me. But I looked at hetero Japanese animé and it’s horrific!

Messy: It’s all rape.

Missy: It’s paedophilic. The men are very old and ugly, the girls are really young and pretty and they’re crying. I tried very hard to find something that wasn’t like that and I stumbled across this film. It’s actually made by women.

Missy: We’ve had some funny reactions to it, some men saying, ‘I will never watch anything like that again’. They’d rather have live action, watching an animated version in some way really flips them out. For the most part people like it.

Messy: The reason why La Freak is quite girl-heavy is because 90% of pornography focuses on the female body. And while as females we can appreciate the beauty of the female body, and it’d be completely absurd to not include it and celebrate it, the show has changed. That animé was the first thing that shifted it and became a celebration of the masculine form. From then we got a better balance.

You clearly spend a lot of time sifting through online porn to find the good stuff.

Missy: This was another reason for La Freak. We would go on the computer, try and watch porn, and what we were finding was quite unpleasant. You have to really look hard for something you’ll enjoy. So the other idea of La Freak was to find the gems, cut out the delving through, and say, we guarantee that it’ll all be good. It may not all be to your exact sexual taste, but it will be at the very least interesting. It won’t be what you see on Redtube.

Why do you think it’s important to watch those films collectively?

Messy: I think porn is one of the last taboos. I like doing slightly risqué things and that’s one of the reasons I enjoy it, because it’s naughty. And it seems even naughtier because it’s put on by women.

Missy: And that’s why there’s music and it’s fast-paced. We want to be laughing, greet everyone, dance, so everybody knows you can relax. You don’t have to feel weird or uncomfortable about being here.

Messy: That’s why we move around the room, it’s not to distract people, it’s to chill them out…

Why is the music so important to you?

Messy: There was a show where we changed the format for one night. We got rid of the music so it was just films and blackness. Just as an experiment to see whether people were coming for the vibe or for the films. And what we found was that without the songs the response was really rigid and British.

Missy: Awkward, serious, no one spoke.

Messy: If you watch soft-core 70s porn there is music.

Missy: I find it much more fun to watch. From the 80s onwards it’s silent, and it’s the same sex noises. He’s grunting like a silver-backed gorilla, she’s moaning, and every film is the same. I think there’s a lot of focus on how women are treated in that kind of porn, but I also think the men are given a very robotic role – it’s like a bizarre machine that keeps doing this motion. I think both parties get a raw deal.

What’s the future of La Freak?

Messy: We’ve had this guy audition for us, I got him round the other night. He’d waxed his moustache and put eyeliner on and he was wearing a corset, a top hat, a silver jockstrap, stockings, suspenders and kitten heels, and he looked really masculine, but really feminine too. It was amazing. So I sat down with a glass of wine, and he started monologuing. It was a very touching piece about sexuality and your inner freak, a poem about his sexual discovery, but it definitely had an edge of murderous hysteria. It wasn’t a joyful piece. It culminated with him pretending to shove a massive cucumber up his bum and then poo it out. His act wasn’t the right tone because La Freak is a celebration of sexuality, a liberation and a happiness, his is much more about how our inner freaks are slaves to homogenised sexuality. It’s interesting but it’s too dark. But we’re now going to join in and curate a show where he’ll be the MC for the evening. I think that will add a level of spectacle and professionalism.

Missy: We feel that having someone who is so confident and looks great would be a wonderful addition. We also want to have erotic artists come and showcase their paintings.

Messy: For the next show we’ve got an artist who does erotic drawings. We have big things planned.

Interview by Virginie Sélavy

La Freak’s next show is at the Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club on Thursday 7 August 2014, 8.30 – 11.30pm, £10 early bird £12 standard. For more information and events please visit La Freak on Facebook.

Project: New Cinephilia


Edinburgh 2011: Director's chair along Princes Street

Date: 16 June 2011

Venue: Inspace Gallery, University of Edinburgh

Part of the Edinburgh International Film Festival

15-26 June 2011

EIFF website

The Edinburgh International Film Festival has announced an innovative new venture, Project: New Cinephilia, aimed to stimulate debate around film criticism and appreciation today.

The project, which culminates in a day-long event on June 16th, will spark conversation with essays, thoughts and ideas from critics, writers, bloggers and filmmakers who are challenging established modes of thinking about cinema. Remote contributors will publish work via a dedicated microsite, launching on May 17 and co-presented by online cinematheque/social network MUBI, which will host comments and discussion around these commissioned materials in their Forums. Other contributors will participate in online roundtables chaired by Jigsaw Lounge founder Neil Young and Michael Koresky, editorial manager at The Criterion Collection and co-founding editor of Reverse Shot. Koresky will join two other visiting journalists, freelance critic Eric Hynes (Village Voice, Time Out New York), and filmmaker/critic Jeff Reichert (Gerrymandering; co-founding editor of Reverse Shot) attending the event.

Electric Sheep will participate in the session ‘Critical Approaches II: Tools, Formats and Experiments’ on Thursday 16 June at the Inspace Gallery as part of Project: New Cinephilia. We will also have a stall, come along to meet us and take a look at our new book, The End: An Electric Sheep Anthology!

Project: New Cinephilia will culminate in a day-long symposium comprising of six interactive sessions which are open to audiences, press, bloggers and film lovers. Topics include new critical approaches to reading film; discussions on how film is consumed in the 21st century and the role of cinema in our daily lives; and a masterclass in how to start your own fanzine, blog or film journal. The day will come to close with a playful 140-character Film Critic Deathmatch, a “battle to the best review” using Twitter.

More details on the Project: New Cinephilia event on the EIFF website.

Secret Cinema: Blade Runner

Secret Cinema: Blade Runner

Secret Cinema

June 2010, London

Secret Cinema website

Emerging from the escalators at Canary Wharf into an unseasonably cold and damp June evening, the first sight that greeted us was of two futuristic policemen standing guard, while air stewardesses in retro outfits guided ‘passengers’ to a Utopian Airways shuttle. After a few minutes on board, a man in a trench coat abruptly stopped the bus, alerting the passengers and crew that we were to be redirected to a holding station in the wake of a replicant rebellion. In case anyone hadn’t figured it out by now, we were on our way to a screening of Ridley Scott’s classic sci-fi film Blade Runner.

The bus reached its destination a few moments later, a desolate yard in the shadows of Canary Wharf’s skyscrapers. Walking between rows of shipping containers, boys in uniform yelled at us to hurry inside the warehouse; we were harassed by refugees and disturbed by the site of three vertically challenged men taking baseball bats to a car. Inside was a stunning recreation of the film’s futuristic vision of LA, with its crowded stalls selling anything from noodles to replicant pets. Pole dancers, masks covering their faces, shimmied on top of scaffolding, overlooking the bar where Chrome Hoof, clad in gold, played a set of jarring, angular rock. Women with snakes draped across their shoulders roamed through the crowd. A woman in a see-through plastic coat sat at a vanity table applying make-up. An actress, dressed in torn stockings and a fur coat, wearing a blonde wig, wandered, oblivious, through the guests. Outside in the back yard, a fire-eater performed on top of an armoured vehicle.

While it was impossible to completely shake the feeling that it was all an elaborate set-up, the level of detail that went into organising the event was near genius. The army of actors, who portrayed nuns, strippers, police officers, Decker, Roy, Rachael, and almost everyone from the cast, were impressive in their ability to stay in character while surrounded by throngs of film-goers knocking back sushi and beer. A few drinks later, when we were finally ushered into the screening room, the recreation of J.F Sebastien’s apartment that greeted us was breathtaking; more actors and actresses dressed as his robotic playthings littered the remarkable set. By that time, the film itself was almost a side-show, the crowd even cheering at the scene when Decker and Rachael kiss. But there was still a surprise left in store for the audience: Decker and Roy, playing out their final scene, hanging off the brick wall of the warehouse, illuminated by a projection of the building’s façade.

Sign up to find out about the next event on the Secret Cinema website.

It was a remarkable night; and it’s almost impossible to imagine how Secret Cinema will ever top it. I’ll certainly be there next time to see if they pull it off.

Sarah Cronin