28 November 2009

Metro

Metro
Author Magdy El Shafee and his publisher, Mohamed El Sahrqawi, have been fined 5,000 pounds by an Egyptian court. They were convicted of writing and distributing an 'immoral' text, namely the graphic novel Metro, which was confiscated last year.

27 November 2009

Muhammad: The 'Banned' Images

Muhammad: The 'Banned' Images
Gary Hull's book Muhammad: The 'Banned' Images includes reproductions of the controversial Jyllands-Posten Mohammed caricatures and a selection of historical Mohammed images including The Remaining Signs Of Past Centuries (censored from a French textbook). Its cover is a rather bland depiction of an actor portraying Mohammed.

Hull describes his (self-published?) book as a "supplement" and "errata" to Jytte Klausen's book The Cartoons That Shook The World, as Hull includes Mohammed caricatures which were removed by Klausen's publisher. However, Klausen has not endorsed Hull's publication, and the two books have no official connection. The books Blasphemy and L'Affaire Des Caricatures provide more insightful coverage of the debate surrounding images of Mohammed.

Story Of The Eye

Story Of The Eye
Story Of The Eye, an exhibition of watercolour paintings by Tawan Wattuya and photographs by Tada Varich, was inspired by Georges Bataille's disturbing novella of the same name. It shares Bataille's fascination with sex and death, as Tada's photographs include borderline hardcore images and a foetus preserved in formaldehyde. Tawan's paintings are even more graphic, though less realistic.

Story Of The Eye is at Gossip Gallery, Bangkok, from 12th November until 12th December. (The anthology film L'Erotisme was also inspired by Bataille.)

23 November 2009

Napoleon

Napoleon
Napoleon
Napoleon
Napoleon: The Greatest Movie Never Made, edited by Alison Castle, is a collection of ten volumes (Reference, Script, Production, Notes, Correspondence, Chronology, Text, Costumes, Location Scouting, and Picture File), and a poster, packaged inside an enormous, hollow book. It's outrageously expensive and extremely heavy (10kg), and is limited to 1,000 numbered copies (mine being #246).

Kubrick started pre-production for a proposed epic Napoleon Bonaparte biopic in 1968, and his research included collecting over 300 Napoleonic books (all of which are listed in Castle's bibliography), a database of 17,000 images (of which Castle reproduces 6,000; the full database is online), and 25,000 biographical index cards (of which Castle reproduces 100). The project was ultimately cancelled, however, after the box-office failure of another Napoleon film, Waterloo.

Castle's book, published by Taschen, features full reprints of Kubrick's Napoleon treatment and screenplay, and two drafts of his production notes. Selections from his thousands of letters, notebooks, and costume photographs are also included. Lengthy conversations between Kubrick and historian Felix Markham are meticulously and comprehensively transcribed.

After Kubrick died, his archive materials were displayed in a temporary Stanley Kubrick exhibition, and the permanent Stanley Kubrick Archive was established. The exhibition catalogue, published in 2004, contains a chapter about Napoleon (The Best Movie (N)ever Made, by Eva-Maria Magel), and Alison Castle's 2005 book The Stanley Kubrick Archives also includes a Napoleon chapter (The Epic That Never Was, by Gene D Phillips).

18 November 2009

The September Issue

The September Issue
The September Issue is RJ Cutler's fly-on-the-wall documentary following Vogue editor Anna Wintour and her senior staff as they prepare the magazine's September 2007 issue. Wintour was the inspiration for the Miranda Priestly character in The Devil Wears Prada, and The September Issue contains little that will soften her public image - even an initially sweet scene with her daughter, Katherine, concludes with Wintour encouraging an unwilling Katherine to become a fashion editor. (She seems genuinely supportive of a young Thai designer, Thakoon Panichgul, but that might change once he becomes truly established.)

The film basically confirms our perceptions of Wintour (her instant dismissals of clothes, photos, or comments she doesn't like), though more surprising are the supporting cast of Vogue's editorial staff. The likable, hippyish, down-to-earth Grace Coddington clomps around the office, and has Wintour's fashion instincts plus humour and sensitivity. In contrast, Andre Leon Talley is almost a caricature; with his ridiculous capes and designer towels, he looks like a huge, spangly potato.

16 November 2009

Reincarnate


Reincarnate

Thunska Pansittivorakul’s new film, Reincarnate (จุติ), is a fictionalised portrait of Thunska and his leading actor, Panuwat Wisessiri. Panuwat discusses the filming process with Thunska, while never breaking character, thus blurring the boundary between behind-the-scenes footage and the scenes themselves. The camera films Panuwat’s body as he sleeps, showers, and relaxes.

Thunska and Panuwat play Jenga, with the red, yellow, and blue blocks symbolising the various political groups in Thailand. (Supporters of Thaksin Shinawatra wear red shirts; their antagonists, who support the current government, wear blue shirts; anti-Thaksin monarchists wear yellow shirts.) Thunska’s film This Area Is Under Quarantine (บริเวณนี้อยู่ภายใต้การกักกัน) was more overtly political, though it was consequently banned. (His earlier films were screened at a retrospective in 2008.)

Reincarnate is arguably Thunska’s most explicit film, with a brief sequence (featuring Tharapong Buasai) which is visually similar to, and even more graphic than, his short documentary Unseen Bangkok (มหัศจรรย์กรุงเทพ). In both films, the same camera angle is used, foregrounding a particular part of the anatomy, which the director can’t resist touching. Reincarnate was intended partly as a protest against the 2009 Thai cinema ratings system, which prohibits frontal nudity amongst many other taboos; unsurprisingly, the film has not been submitted to the national ratings board.

There are some beautiful images in the film, such as Panuwat, in silhouette, framed by an open window. The film’s ending, in which Panuwat describes giving birth to a daughter, who then entices his spirit to leave his body, is deliberately ambiguous, and tonally similar to the work of Apichatpong Weerasethakul, who was a co-producer of Reincarnate.

15 November 2009

7th World Film Festival of Bangkok


7th World Film Festival of Bangkok This Area Is Under Quarantine

The 7th World Film Festival of Bangkok finished today, after opening on 3rd November. All screenings took place at Paragon Cineplex (the same as the 6th Festival, whereas the 5th was held at Esplanade Cineplex).

A Letter To Uncle Boonmee (จดหมายถึงลุงบุญมี), part of Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Primitive installation, was screened on 9th and 15th November. Unfortunately, This Area Is Under Quarantine (บริเวณนี้อยู่ภายใต้การกักกัน), by Thunska Pansittivorakul, was not shown, after the Ministry of Culture refused to give it a rating. The documentary contains footage of the 2004 Tak Bai incident, taken from a VCD distributed by Same Sky (ฟ้าเดียวกัน) magazine.

11 November 2009

The Remaining Signs Of Past Centuries

Histoire Geographie
Why We Left Islam
Mohammed: The Profit Of Islam
A copy of a medieval illustration from The Remaining Signs Of Past Centuries by Abu Rayhan Biruni has been censored from a French textbook, Histoire Geographie (written by Eric Chaudron and Remy Knafou). The book was originally published uncensored in 2005, though Mohammed's face was pixelated for the fifth edition's second printing.

(Jyllands-Posten published twelve Mohammed caricatures in 2005, inspiring numerous satirical Mohammed cartoons.) Mohammed, as depicted in The Remaining Signs Of Past Centuries, appears uncensored on the covers of two books published last year: Why We Left Islam: Former Muslims Speak Out (Susan Crimp and Joel Richardson) and a reprint of Mohammed: The Prophet Of Islam (HEE Hayes).

09 November 2009

Controverses

Controverses
Controverses: Une Histoire Juridique & Ethique De La Photographie, by Daniel Girardin and Christian Pirker, is a Swiss exhibition catalogue featuring some of the most controversial photographs in history. The images include early publicity photos, photojournalism, and art photography.

One of the most powerful photographs is a picture of a severed hand, from a victim of the World Trade Center terrorist attack. The image (2001), by Todd Maisel, was published by only a single newspaper (New York's Daily News), while other American papers made a collective decision to avoid printing photographs of the victims. (Similarly, during World War II there was an American government ban on publication of images of dead US soldiers, though Life magazine was finally permitted to print George Strock’s photograph of three dead soldiers on 20th September 1943.)

The two Iraq wars have produced similarly controversial images (not included in the book). A photo by Ken Jarecke of an Iraqi soldier's charred body was rejected by all newspapers except The Observer (which printed it on 10th March 1991), and "a gruesome image of a young child's head split open" was the subject of much debate in the UK media before finally being printed by The Guardian (on 28th March 2003).

Arguably the most shocking picture is Kevin Carter's photograph (1993) of a vulture following a starving Sudanese child. After taking the photograph, Carter shooed the potential scavenger away, though he was later criticised for not helping the child any further.

The book includes some famously provocative images, such as Oliviero Toscani's Benetton poster showing a nun kissing a priest (1992) and Andres Serrano's Piss Christ (1987). A Robert Mapplethorpe self-portrait (1978) is included, though it's one of Mapplethorpe's less graphic images.

Several controversial photographs of naked children are featured, including a sexualised portrait by Irina Ionesco (1970) of her daughter Eva, and notorious images by Graham Ovenden (1984) and Jock Sturges (1989). Annelies Strba's Sonja In Her Bath (1985) and a portrait of Brooke Shields by Gary Gross (1975), both of which have been removed by the police from UK galleries, are also included. Nan Goldin's "Klara and Adda Belly Dancing" [sic] is mentioned though not reproduced.

A paparazzo photo of Princess Diana taken by Jacques Langevin in the moments before her car crash (1997) is included. The infamous photo of Diana receiving first aid after the crash is mentioned in the text without being reproduced.

03 November 2009

Suicide Mind

Suicide Mind
Suicide Mind
For his new installation, Suicide Mind, Pornprasert Yamazaki has painted in his own blood on paper and ceramics. His works on paper, large reproductions of Thai and American banknotes, are hung on the walls, while on the floor are ceramic tiles painted with flower patterns. In the centre stands a vase of dead roses on a stone plinth. (The decaying flowers recall last year's Perishable Beauty exhibition and Otto Berchem's Deadheading from The Suspended Moment.)

Like Pornprasert, Kosit Juntaratip is another Thai artist who uses blood in his work. Blood has also featured in two recent Bangkok exhibitions: Kristian von Hornsleth's Deep Storage Art Project, and Chen Lingyang's Twelve Flower Months (from Women In A Society Of Double-Sexuality).

Suicide Mind opened at Whitespace Gallery in Bangkok on 23rd October, and will close on 6th December. The exhibition also includes a video showing Pornprasert extracting and painting with blood.

02 November 2009

European Union Film Festival 2009

European Union Film Festival 2009
California Dreamin'
The European Union Film Festival 2009 will take place at SF World (the cinema at CentralWorld) from 19th to 29th November. One of the highlights will be California Dreamin', by the late Romanian director Cristian Nemescu, screening on 22nd and 23rd November.

The 2007 festival also featured an outstanding Romanian film, Four Months, Three Weeks, & Two Days. Both of these films have also been screened at Chulalongkorn University's International Film Festival: Four Months, Three Weeks, & Two Days in 2008, and California Dreamin' at the 2008-2009 event.

01 November 2009

ภาพยนตร์ศรีศาลายา

Tears Of The Black Tiger
Last Life In The Universe
Tropical Malady
The Thai Film Archive (in Salaya, near Bangkok), is hosting a film festival this month, ภาพยนตร์ศรีศาลายา, screening one film per day from the past thirty years of Thai cinema. Highlights include Tears Of The Black Tiger (Wisit Sasanatieng; 20th November), Last Life In The Universe (Pen-ek Ratanaruang; 23rd November), and Tropical Malady (Apichatpong Weerasethakul; 26th November).

Art & Words

Art & Words
Art & Words is a catalogue of recent video works by Thai artist Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook. In Conversation, Death Seminar, and The Class, Araya talks to (and even teaches) a group of cadavers. One of her Conversation videos was shown at The Suspended Moment in 2006, and an earlier work, Reading For Female Corpse, was shown at From Message To Media the following year.

31 October 2009

Screamfest

Screamfest
Funny Games
Michael Haneke's English-language remake of his film Funny Games will be shown in Bangkok tonight as part of the Cineplex cinema chain's Screamfest, to celebrate Halloween.

30 October 2009

Pop Life:
Art in a Material World


Pop Life Pop Life

The catalogue for Tate Modern’s current exhibition Pop Life: Art in a Material World has been deemed illegal by the Metropolitan Police Service. The Met ordered the removal of Richard Prince’s photograph Spiritual America on the day before the exhibition opened, and the Tate withdrew the catalogue from sale while it sought legal advice.

In a letter to the Tate, the Met confirmed that Spiritual America is “a level 1 indecent image of a child. The possession and distribution of which are criminal offences.” They also cautioned that the catalogue could not be legally sold uncensored: “if the book were to be distributed in its original form (i.e. with the picture of Brooke Shields in it) an offence would be committed under the Protection of Children Act 1978.”

This makes the catalogue one of the few commercially published books that are illegal to possess in the UK. Other titles on this list could conceivably include I last och lust: sexuella bilder förr och nu (‘in vice and lust: sexual images past and present’), by Swedish anti-pornography campaigner Hans Nestius; and William Powell’s The Anarchist Cookbook, which has been cited in several trials of terrorists and other extremists.

In his catalogue essay, Jack Bankowsky acknowledges that Shields was “decidedly underage” and that “Prince invites us to ogle Brooke Shields in her prepubescent nakedness”. To avoid prosecution, a sticker has now been placed over the offending photograph: “This image has been obscured on legal advice” (p. 123).

The catalogue itself, edited by Bankowsky, Alison M. Gingeras, and Catherine Wood, is an excellent exploration of artists, such as Andy Warhol, who “engaged with mass media and the market and cultivated artistic personas”. Scott Rothkopf’s essay on Jeff Koons’ Made in Heaven series is a particular highlight. There is also an extensive bibliography.

Artificial Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence
Artificial Intelligence - From Stanley Kubrick To Steven Spielberg: The Vision Behind The Film, edited by Jan Harlan and Jane M Struthers, is a portfolio of pre-production material from Spielberg's film AI: Artificial Intelligence. It includes several pages from Kubrick's notebooks, though the bulk of the book is devoted to large reproductions of concept art by Chris Baker.

AI was originally conceived by Kubrick, who worked with Brian Aldiss on a treatment and screenplay based on Super-Toys Last All Summer Long, a short story by Aldiss. Kubrick subsequently collaborated with Bob Shaw, Ian Watson, and Sara Maitland on revised versions of the script, and production was scheduled to start in 1999 after the completion of Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut.

After Kubrick's death during post-production of Eyes Wide Shut, Spielberg took over the project and wrote a new screenplay based on Kubrick's notes. The film, directed by Spielberg, was released in 2001. (I've always regarded AI as a misguided homage to Kubrick with a syrupy Spielbergian ending.)

The book features a foreword by Spielberg which gives a brief summary of his friendship with Kubrick. (Spielberg was more forthcoming in an interview for the Channel 5 documentary Steven & Stanley in 2001.) There is an account of AI's pre-production by Struthers, who works with the Kubrick Archive, though it glosses over Kubrick's 'creative differences' with his various script collaborators. (Frank interviews with Aldiss and Maitland are featured in the Channel 4 documentary The Last Movie from 1999.)

29 October 2009

El Pais

El Pais
Akhbar Al Youm
The 24th October edition of the Spanish newspaper El Pais was banned from sale in Morocco, as it printed a cartoon by Le Monde cartoonist Plantu which Moroccan authorities considered disrespectful to the national flag. The cartoon originally appeared in Le Monde on 22nd October. El Pais also reprinted Khalid Kadafrom's cartoon from Akhbar Al Youm. (Other foreign publications - Courrier-International and L'Express International - have also been banned in Morocco.)

28 October 2009

Drag Me To Hell

Drag Me To Hell
The hugely enjoyable Drag Me To Hell is Sam Raimi's first horror film since his Evil Dead trilogy. It's a welcome return to supernatural horror, in contrast to the slasher remakes and 'torture porn' which have recently dominated the genre. It even references the silent vampire film Nosferatu, with a demon's hand casting a long shadow similar to Nosferatu's Orlok.

The plot, in which a curse is placed on a bank employee, provides plenty of gory set-pieces, though the tone is always tongue-in-cheek rather than truly horrific. (A director's cut, more violent than the theatrical version, has also been released.) All hell breaks loose for the final confrontation with the demon, and this scene includes a great moment in which a goat becomes possessed. The last-minute twist is actually revealed on the film's poster.

Broken Embraces

Broken Embraces
The central character in Pedro Almodovar's Broken Embraces is a blind script-writer and former director whose lover, Lena, died after their affair made her husband jealous. The film was screened at the 2009 Bangkok International Film Festival last month, and is now on general release.

Broken Embraces is more consistently restrained than Almodovar's two previous films, Volver and Bad Education, neither of which take their dark themes completely seriously. Broken Embraces does have some comic relief, however: rushes from the film-within-the-film, the melodramatic Chicas & Maletas (which is modelled on Almodovar's frenetic comedy Women On The Verge Of A Nervous Breakdown).

Almodovar has described Broken Embraces as a film noir. It does feature typical noir themes, such as jealousy and betrayal, though Lena is no femme fatale, and Almodovar's sets and lighting are only slightly less bright than his usual style.

Penelope Cruz is outstanding as the writer/director's lover, and Blanca Portillo is also particularly effective as his agent. Cruz and Portillo both previously appeared in Volver.

It's hard to feel sorry for the central character, however; he is blind and in mourning, yet he lives in a beautiful apartment, has several assistants, and apparently seduces women on a regular basis. For me, Almodovar's greatest film is still Talk To Her, with its devastating narrative, sympathetic and morally ambiguous characters, and moments of outrageous comedy.

27 October 2009

Filthy English

Filthy English
Filthy English: The How, Why, When, & What Of Everyday Swearing, by Peter Silverton, is yet another guide to the history of 'offensive' language. The book is divided thematically, as are Forbidden Words and Jonathon Green's Slang Down The Ages, as opposed to the word-by-word organisation of Dirty Words, Getting Off At Gateshead, and Hugh Rawson's Dictionary Of Invective. (An Encyclopedia Of Swearing contains entries on themes and individual words.)

Filthy English is useful for its contemporary examples, though it is slightly anecdotal in tone. Silverton has conducted substantial research [he cites my website as an "extensive source"], and he has also interviewed writers and performers about their attitudes to the words he discusses, though there are no footnotes.

20 October 2009

99 Classic Movies
For People In A Hurry

99 Classic Movies For People In A Hurry
99 Classic Movies For People In A Hurry (or, on the title page: 99 Movies For People In A Hurry) condenses each film into a four-frame comic strip. The films are listed in seemingly random order, as follows:
  • The Karate Kid
  • Dirty Dancing
  • Star Wars IV: A New Hope
  • Ghostbusters
  • Back To The Future
  • Raiders Of The Lost Ark
  • Gone With The Wind
  • Fatal Attraction
  • Casablanca
  • Radio Days
  • The Terminator
  • Alien
  • Blade Runner
  • Spartacus
  • The Third Man
  • Citizen Kane
  • Easy Rider
  • Taxi Driver
  • Some Like It Hot
  • Deliverance
  • Bicycle Thieves
  • Cinema Paradiso
  • The Seventh Seal
  • The Great Dictator
  • Lawrence Of Arabia
  • The Shining
  • The Maltese Falcon
  • King Kong
  • The Good, The Bad, & The Ugly
  • Jaws
  • Dawn Of The Dead
  • The Creature From The Black Lagoon
  • Showgirls
  • The Mummy
  • A Fish Called Wanda
  • The Breakfast Club
  • Mad Max
  • Die Hard
  • Delicatessen
  • The Searchers
  • Psycho
  • Battleship Potemkin
  • Un Chien Andalou
  • The Misfits
  • The Public Enemy
  • Rocky
  • The Blue Lagoon
  • Wild At Heart
  • Annie
  • The Sound Of Music
  • The African Queen
  • Singin' In The Rain
  • 2001: A Space Odyssey
  • Dr Zhivago
  • A Clockwork Orange
  • Bullitt
  • The Sting
  • Rebel Without A Cause
  • Barbarella
  • The Evil Dead
  • Police Academy
  • The Blues Brothers
  • Yojimbo
  • The Bridge On The River Kwai
  • M. Hulot's Holiday
  • The Guns Of Navarone
  • Seven Samurai
  • The Thing
  • Escape From New York
  • The Testament Of Dr Mabuse
  • Metropolis
  • Enter The Dragon
  • Jailhouse Rock
  • Cat On A Hot Tin Roof
  • Schindler's List
  • Brazil
  • The Wizard Of Oz
  • Bagdad Cafe
  • The Big Blue
  • Scarface
  • The Godfather
  • A Streetcar Named Desire
  • Dr Strangelove
  • Pulp Fiction
  • ET: The Extra-Terrestrial
  • Rosemary's Baby
  • The Exorcist
  • Breakfast At Tiffany's
  • Forrest Gump
  • The Shawshank Redemption
  • GoodFellas
  • Fight Club
  • North By Northwest
  • The Silence Of The Lambs
  • Sunset Boulevard
  • Apocalypse Now
  • Platoon
  • It's A Wonderful Life
  • The Matrix
1980s films such as The Karate Kid, Ghostbusters, and Back To The Future are presumably included purely for their nostalgia value. Note that The Maltese Falcon is the John Huston version and Scarface is the Brian de Palma version. Oddly, Dawn Of The Dead is the Zack Snyder remake rather than the classic George Romero original. Also, Some Like It Hot is the 1959 comic masterpiece, not the obscure 1939 comedy.

18 October 2009

Story Of The Scene

Story Of The Scene
Story Of The Scene: The Inside Scoop On Famous Moments In Film, by Roger Clarke, discusses the making of eighty classic film scenes, with a two-page chapter devoted to each film (except Spartacus, which has two chapters). The most interesting chapters are those that concentrate on one specific moment, such as Brandon Lee's death in The Crow, Roman Polanski's cameo in Chinatown, the subway grille in The Seven-Year Itch, and the cockroach-eating in Vampire's Kiss.

Other chapters have less focus, and simply summarise general trivia about each film. In some cases, though, the author has interviewed the directors involved, and this results in a few gems: Park Chan-Wook discussing the octopus-eating scene in Oldboy, and John Boorman describing Stanley Kubrick's fascination with the rape scene in Deliverance.

16 October 2009

The Tate Guide To Modern Art Terms

The Tate Guide To Modern Art Terms
The Tate Guide To Modern Art Terms, by Simon Wilson and Jessica Lack, is an alphabetical guide to art styles, materials, genres, and 'isms' from Impressionism onwards. The illustrations are all black-and-white, and are limited to works from the permanent collections of the various Tate galleries; each entry is succinct, though the scope is comprehensive and there is extensive cross-referencing.

15 October 2009

Dance With The Devil

Dance With The Devil
Ottmar Horl, who was under police investigation last month for displaying a Nazi gnome in Nuremberg, is now displaying 1,200 of them in Straubing. The exhibition, Dance With The Devil, opened today and will close next Monday. It has previously been shown in Belgium and Italy. Last month's police investigation was eventually dropped, as it was determined that the gnome was satirising, rather than promoting, the Nazis.

07 October 2009

Water In Milk Exists

Water In Milk Exists
Water In Milk Exists, directed by Lawrence Weiner, features young (almost exclusively straight and white) couples discussing philosophy and having sex. Hardcore scenes are punctuated by shallow monologues about the natures of reality ("specific or general"?) and structure, including a debate about Mies van der Rohe ("I think he was an architect"). It could be another Shortbus, if it took itself less seriously.

04 October 2009

Akhbar Al Youm

Akhbar Al Youm
The Moroccan newspaper Akhbar Al Youm has been closed down by police, following its publication of a cartoon by Khalid Kadar on 26th September. The cartoon depicts Prince Moulay Ismail against a Moroccan flag background. The cartoonist, and the newspaper's editor, Taoufik Bouachrine, have both been arrested. Previously, Khalid Kadar drew another controversial royal cartoon, in Courrier-International. (L'Express International has also been banned in Morocco.)

01 October 2009

Spiritual America


Spiritual America

A photograph of Brooke Shields has been removed from Tate Modern’s exhibition Pop Life: Art in a Material World. The image shows Shields, aged ten, wearing make-up and standing nude in a bathtub.

The exhibition opened today in London, and will close on 17th January 2010, though the Shields photograph was removed yesterday following a visit from the Metropolitan Police. The exhibition catalogue has also been withdrawn from sale.

The photo, originally titled The Woman in the Child, was taken in 1975 by Gary Gross for his Little Women exhibition in New York. It was subsequently published in Sugar and Spice (1976), Photo magazine (1978), Index on Censorship magazine (May–June 1996), and American Photo magazine (September–October 2009). It was also part of the Controverses (‘controversies’) exhibition, which has been shown at the Musee de l’Elysee in Lausanne (2008), the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris (2009), and the Botanique in Brussels (2009).

In 1983, Richard Prince rephotographed the 1975 image, retitled it Spiritual America, and exhibited it again in New York. Spiritual America has been published in the Brazilian magazine Item-4 (1996) and in the book Stripped Bare: The Body Revealed in Contemporary Art (2004). It was included in the New Museum exhibition East Village USA in New York (2004), and was the centrepiece of a major Prince retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum in New York (2007–2008).

Two years ago, another UK gallery also removed a photograph of a naked child (Nan Goldin’s Klara and Edda Belly-Dancing) following police advice, though it was later cleared of obscenity. Photographs of children by Robert Mapplethorpe, Graham Ovenden, Ron Oliver, Will McBride, David Hamilton, Tierney Gearon, and Annelies Strba have previously been investigated by UK police as potentially obscene. In America, the FBI investigated photographers Jacqueline Livingston and Jock Sturges on similar charges, though they were later acquitted.

30 September 2009

2009 Bangkok International Film Festival

2009 Bangkok International Film Festival
Antichrist
Dogtooth
Broken Embraces
Sawasdee Bangkok
Nymph
The 2009 Bangkok International Film Festival (incorporating the Bangkok International Animation Festival 2009) ends today, after six days of screenings at Paragon Cineplex and SF CentralWorld. Today's (unfortunately invitation-only) closing film is Sawasdee Bangkok, a collection of nine short films about Bangkok inspired by Paris, Je T'Aime.

The Festival also included Lars von Trier's provocative Antichrist (25th and 26th September), Giorgos Lanthimos's similarly explicit Dogtooth (26th and 29th September), Pedro Almodovar's Broken Embraces (28th and 29th September), and Pen-ek Ratanaruang's Nymph (the short version rather than the Cannes version; 27th and 29th September). (Pen-ek's Ploy was screened in 2007, and his Invisible Waves opened the Festival in 2006.) The Festival's poster (Beauty Eternal) has been designed by Wisit Sasanatieng, who also designed the 2008 poster.

24 September 2009

Celebration

Celebration
Celebration: The Video Collection
Celebration, Madonna's third greatest hits album (after The Immaculate Collection and GHV2) features a comprehensive selection of hits from her entire career at Warner. She had been signed to Warner since her debut album in 1983, though Celebration is her final Warner project. (Future albums will be released by Live Nation.) Celebration is also available as a video compilation, Celebration: The Video Collection, an exhaustive videography featuring forty-seven videos (though the nudity in Justify My Love and Erotica is censored).

The double-disc album track-list is: Hung Up, Music, Vogue, Four Minutes, Holiday, Everybody, Like A Virgin, Into The Groove, Like A Prayer, Ray Of Light, Sorry, Express Yourself, Open Your Heart, Borderline, Secret, Erotica, Justify My Love, Revolver, Dress You Up, Material Girl, La Isla Bonita, Papa Don't Preach, Lucky Star, Burning Up, Crazy For You, Who's That Girl, Frozen, Miles Away, Take A Bow, Live To Tell, Beautiful Stranger, Hollywood, Die Another Day, Don't Tell Me, Cherish, and Celebration. A single-disc version is also available, with fewer tracks. It's So Cool is available as a digital bonus track.

The video track-list is: Hung Up, Music, Vogue, Four Minutes, Holiday, Like A Virgin, Into The Groove, Like A Prayer, Ray Of Light, Sorry, Express Yourself, Open Your Heart, Borderline, Secret, Erotica, Justify My Love, Material Girl, La Isla Bonita, Papa Don't Preach, Lucky Star, Burning Up, Crazy For You, Who's That Girl, Frozen, Miles Away, Take A Bow, Beautiful Stranger, Hollywood, Die Another Day, Don't Tell Me, Cherish, Celebration, Deeper And Deeper, I'll Remember, Rain, Secret, Bedtime Stories, I Want You, You'll See, The Power Of Goodbye, American Pie, What It Feels Like For A Girl, Love Profusion, Get Together, Jump, Give It 2 Me, and True Blue.

Antichrist

Antichrist
Antichrist, directed by Lars von Trier, is intentionally provocative, occasionally surreal, and ultimately misogynistic. The director also made The Idiots, which scandalised Cannes in 1999, and Antichrist is another Cannes succes de scandale.

The film is divided into a series of chapters, and also includes a prologue and epilogue. In the prologue, which is filmed in slow-motion and black-and-white, a man and woman have sex while their son falls to his death. The man, who is a psychotherapist, helps the woman overcome her grief (though his psychobabble is ineffective), and the couple take a trip to their cabin in the woods. The cabin is called Eden; the names of the protagonists are never revealed, though the Biblical reference is clear enough.

The woman is writing a thesis on gynocide (the systematic murder of women). 'Gynocide' was coined by the feminist writer Mary Daly in her excellent book Gyn/Ecology, though Antichrist is arguably an anti-feminist film. Like Eve, the woman becomes increasingly unsympathetic as a character, most obviously when she (unconvincingly) drills a hole through the man's leg. The film's ending suggests that, as in medieval witch trials, feminine evil must be destroyed.

Though most of the film is shot realistically with hand-held cameras and jump-cuts, there are some inexplicable fantasy sequences involving wild animals, notably a ludicrous talking fox who, in the director's voice, says "Chaos reigns!". There are also three close-up inserts which are included purely for shock value, featuring hardcore sex (as in The Idiots) and female circumcision.

22 September 2009

Sex No Go

Sex No Go
A Thai student magazine promoting sex education, distributed by Kasetsart University and the Thai Health Promotion Foundation, was withdrawn and destroyed earlier this month. The magazine, Sex No Go, which was originally published in January, featured a sexual image of Mohammed and his wife Aisha, depicted as Lego characters.

The Lego picture actually shows two Israelites, and was created by The Brick Testament website; it was used as a Mohammed parody in 2006, one of many satirical Mohammed images produced following the controversy surrounding twelve Mohammed caricatures published by Jyllands-Posten.

Mohammed married Aisha when she was a child; their relationship has previously been portrayed in a Dutch cartoon and an American novel. Mohammed has also been depicted in other sexual situations: with Jesus, in a Canadian magazine; and with Jesus, Moses, and Buddha, in an Israeli magazine.

Bodyworlds

Bodyworlds
Bodyworlds, the anatomical exhibition of preserved human corpses organised by Gunther von Hagens, has been touring the world for the past twelve years. Famously, when the exhibition came to London in 2002, von Hagens performed a public autopsy which was later televised.

This year, two corpses posed in mid-coitus were added to the exhibition, though they had to be removed before the exhibition was shown in Cologne (Germany), Augsburg (Germany), and Zurich (Switzerland). (A Bodyworlds imitator, Our Body, was banned in France earlier this year.)