23 January 2015

“Thai democracy is dead...”


Democracy Monument

The National Legislative Assembly voted today to impeach former prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra. She has therefore been banned from political activity for the next five years. (Her brother, former PM Thaksin Shinawatra, also received a five-year ban, in 2007.) The verdict was largely a foregone conclusion, as the NLA members were all appointed by the junta.

Yingluck will also face a criminal investigation, the Attorney General announced today. Yingluck had planned to give a press conference following the impeachment vote, though the military prevented her from doing so. Instead, she issued a statement online: “Even as Thai democracy is dead and the rule of law destroyed, anti-democratic forces still remain prevalent as a destructive force, as evident from what I am experiencing.”

Yingluck’s impeachment had been recommended by the National Anti-Corruption Commission, following its investigation into her controversial rice subsidy scheme. (In 2011, the Pheu Thai government agreed to pay farmers up to 50% above the market rate for their rice, intending to withhold it from the world market and thus drive up the price. The result, however, was that other countries increased their rice exports, leaving the government with vast stockpiles that it could not sell.)

Given that Yingluck was removed from office by the Constitutional Court on 7th May last year, her impeachment eight months later seems designed purely to prevent her from returning to power in future elections. It also, therefore, reinforces the impression that last year’s coup (as in 2006) was intended primarily to remove all traces of Thaksin’s political influence. (Thaksin led the most popular political movement in Thai history, though he was viewed as a threat by the military and the Privy Council, thus his nominees Samak Sundaravej and Somchai Wongsawat were both removed by the Constitutional Court.)

The NACC had also recommended the impeachment of Somsak Kiatsuranon and Nikhom Wairatpanich—former speakers of the House of Representatives and the Senate, respectively—though their impeachments were rejected by the NLA. Somsak and Nikhom had organised parliamentary votes to amend article 117 of the constitution, in an attempt to restore a fully-elected Senate.

(The 1997 constitution established an elected Senate for the first time, though after the military’s 2007 constitution the Senate was only 50% elected; the proposed amendment was rejected by the Constitutional Court.) Ironically, the military violated the constitution by declaring martial law, and then tore up the entire charter when they launched the coup, yet Somsak and Nikhom faced the threat of impeachment for attempting to amend individual articles in parliament.

Yingluck was elected in 2011. Just as Thaksin was deposed following People’s Alliance for Democracy protests, Yingluck was dismissed after protests by the People’s Democratic Reform Committee. In both cases, the protesters caused maximum disruption as a pretext for a coup—the PAD occupied Suvarnabhumi airport in 2008, and the PDRC sabotaged the election in 2014—though no protest leaders have been prosecuted. In Yingluck’s case, the protests began after her attempt to secure an amnesty for Thaksin, a policy that was condemned by both sides of the political divide.

20 January 2015

Cartographies Of Time

Cartographies Of Time
A New Chart Of History
Cartographies Of Time: A History Of The Timeline, by Daniel Rosenberg and Anthony Grafton, is a history of the visual representation of chronological data. This specialised branch of information graphics has not been studied before, as the authors explain: "little has been written about historical charts and diagrams... This book is an attempt to address that gap." The result is a fascinating, comprehensive, and profusely illustrated history of timelines.

The most impressive timelines featured in Cartographies Of Time are those that attempt to represent the entirety of human history. Joseph Priestley's A New Chart Of History (1769) was one of the first significant examples, followed by Friedrich Strass's Strom Der Zeiten (1804). (Sandra Rendgren's Information Graphics includes Eugene Pick's Tableau De L'Histoire Universelle from 1858, one of several timelines inspired by Strass.)

The Book Of Trees

The Book Of Trees
The Book Of Trees: Visualizing Branches Of Knowledge is a history of tree diagrams and their influence on information graphics. Author Manuel Lima begins by discussing figurative tree diagrams, though subsequent chapters cover "a number of visual methods and techniques for the representation of hierarchical structures".

The book is most significant for its inclusion of diagrams created from the Middle Ages onwards. As the author explains, the field of data visualisation has a surprisingly extensive history, and it is therefore "critical for us to understand this long evolution and not be overly infatuated with work created in the last decade alone". (Sandra Rendgen's Information Graphics and Understanding The World focus primarily on contemporary infographics, though Lima includes numerous recent examples, too.)

The Book Of Trees doesn't succeed in its ambitious attempt "to convey the long, millennial history of information visualization", as it would likely be impossible to produce a comprehensive history of 1,000 years of infographics in a single volume. But it's a fascinating study, and a useful expansion of the first chapter of Lima's earlier book, Visual Complexity. (Edward R Tufte's classic The Visual Display Of Quantitative Information examines the history of charts, tables, and graphs.)

Mardom-e Emrooz

Mardom-e Emrooz
An Iranian newspaper has been closed down after it expressed support for Charlie Hebdo, the French newspaper which suffered a terrorist attack earlier this month. On 13th January, Mardom-e Emrooz published the back-page headline (in Arabic) "I am Charlie, too". A court in Tehran this weekend revoked the newspaper's publishing licence, ruling that expressing solidarity with Charlie Hebdo, which has printed a new Mohammed cartoon, was unacceptable in an Islamic country.

17 January 2015

Understanding The World

Understanding The World
Pulp Fiction In Chronological Order
Theatrum Orbis Terrarum
Understanding The World: The Atlas Of Infographics, written by Sandra Rendgen and edited by Julius Wiedemann, is a somewhat premature sequel to the excellent Information Graphics. Like that earlier book, also published by Taschen, Understanding The World features a new infographic by Nigel Holmes, a historical introduction by Rendgen, and an extensive selection of contemporary infographics organised by category. Both books are folios with brightly colour-coded chapters, and they share the same high-quality colour reproduction and print clarity.

There are several differences between the two books. Nigel Holmes's contribution to Understanding The World is a double-page infographic, though he produced a poster for Information Graphics. Understanding The World is organised thematically (nature, science, economy, society, and culture), whereas Information Graphics was classified by format. While Information Graphics cited the sources in which its infographics first appeared, Understanding The World sometimes omits these citations.

Most significantly, Understanding The World's historical introduction is substantially shorter than that of Information Graphics. The few examples it cites are well chosen, though: Hartmann Schedel's Nuremberg Chronicle, Abraham Ortelius's Theatrum Orbis Terrarum (from which a world map is reproduced), and Denis Diderot's Encyclopedie.

As in Information Graphics, the historical examples remain the highlights of Understanding The World. These hand-drawn maps and diagrams were created hundreds of years before the computer-generated contemporary examples that dominate the book. (Fortunately, there are a few additional historical examples inserted into each chapter.) From the portfolio of recent infographics, one of the most interesting is Noah Smith's timeline Pulp Fiction In Chronological Order, a deconstruction of the film's convoluted narrative.

14 January 2015

Charlie Hebdo

Charlie Hebdo
Le Monde
Les Inrockuptibles
The French newspaper Charlie Hebdo published a new edition today, just a week after Islamic extremists killed twelve people at its editorial offices in Paris. The murders led to international condemnations of religious terrorism, and a collective commitment to freedom of expression. French President Francois Hollande led over a million people in Paris on Sunday, marching in solidarity with Charlie Hebdo and the victims of the killings.

In an act of extreme defiance and principle, today's edition features a new front-page cartoon of Mohammed, by Renald Luzier (known as Luz). The prophet is depicted weeping, as he was on Charlie Hebdo's first Mohammed cover in 2006. He is shown holding a "Je suis Charlie" banner, which has become a symbol of support for the newspaper since last week's attack. Luz also caricatured Mohammed in Liberation in 2011.

The new cover appeared yesterday in several newspapers, including The Independent in the UK, Liberation in France, Sueddeutsche Zeitung in Germany, Corriere Della Sera in Italy, The Star in Kenya, and the New York Post. The cover filled the entire front page of Germany's Die Tageszeitung yesterday, and a collage of covers fills the front page of todays Liberation. It also appears in The Citizen (South Africa) today. In Japan, The Tokyo Shimbun printed the cover yesterday and again today. Turkish newspaper Cuhmuriyet published the cover twice in today's issue.

Today's issue of Le Monde has a front-page cartoon by Jean Plantureux (known as Plantu), showing Catholic, Muslim, and Jewish men all enjoying the new Charlie Hebdo. (Plantu previously drew a Mohammed cartoon for Le Monde in 2006, after the Jyllands-Posten controversy.) This week's issue of the French magazine Les Inrockuptibles, published today, has a new Mohammed cartoon on its front page, drawn by Charles Berberian.

Charlie Hebdo's offices were firebombed in 2011, after it published the Charia Hebdo issue guest-edited by Mohammed. In 2012, it printed a caricature of Mohammed naked. In 2013, it produced a comic-strip biography of Mohammed titled La Vie De Mahomet (part 1 and part 2), with an expanded edition in 2014. Last year, it published a front-page cartoon of Mohammed being beheaded by an Islamic State terrorist.

At the beginning of the century, depictions of Mohammed were not considered problematic: the South Park episode Super Best Friends and the cartoon What Would Mohammed Drive? did not cause significant controversy. However, the publication of a dozen Mohammed caricatures by Jyllands-Posten in 2005 sparked protests around the world. After this, subsequent appearances of Mohammed in South Park (in 2006 and 2010) were censored, leading to the Everybody Draw Mohammed Day! campaign.

Following the Jyllands-Posten controversy, many newspapers printed their own Mohammed cartoons: Weekendavisen, France Soir, The Guardian, Philadelphia Daily News, Liberation, Het Nieuwsblad, The Daily Tar Heel, Akron Beacon Journal, The Strand, Nana, Gorodskiye Vesti, Adresseavisen, Uke-Adressa, and Harper's. The International Herald Tribune has depicted Mohammed twice, in 2006 and 2012.

09 January 2015

Le Point

Le Point
The current issue of French magazine Le Point, published yesterday, contains an illustration of Moahmmed on its front cover. The cover story, La Vraie Vie De Mahomet, is a historical account of Mohammed's life, illustrated with numerous paintings of the prophet, in most (though not all) of which his face has been obscured in accordance with Islamic tradition.

Le Point's article is its response to the killing of several Charlie Hebdo staff this week. Charlie Hebdo published its own Mohammed biography, the irreverent La Vie De Mahomet in 2013 (part 1, part 2), with an expanded edition in 2014. Another French magazine, L'Express, printed historical images of Mohammed's face in 2008 and 2011.

PDF

Charlie Hebdo

Charlie Hebdo
Charlie Hebdo
Berliner Kurier
Twelve people were shot dead on Wednesday in Paris, at the offices of the satirical French newspaper Charlie Hebdo. The newspaper's editor, Stephane Charbonnier (known as Charb), was among those who died. Several cartoonists, including Jean Cabut (known as Cabu), were also killed.

This is possibly the most violent attack ever committed against a media organisation. The killers were Islamic extremists, and Charlie Hebdo is notorious for its provocative caricatures of Mohammed. Last year, the newspaper was sued for blasphemy, and its offices were firebombed in 2011 after its Charia Hebdo edition. (The German newspaper Berliner Kurier yesterday featured a new cartoon of Muhammed in a bath of blood, holding a copy of Charia Hebdo.)

Charlie Hebdo published its first Mohammed cartoon in 2002. This was followed by a front-page Mohammed caricature in 2006, one of many Mohammed cartoons printed in Europe after the Jyllands-Posten controversy. In 2012, it printed a cartoon of Mohammed naked. In 2013, it produced a comic-book biography of Mohammed (La Vie De Mahomet, part 1 and part 2), with an expanded edition in 2014. Most recently, its 1st October 2014 edition featured a highly provocative front-page cartoon by Charb depicting an Islamic State terrorist beheading Mohammed.

07 January 2015

Banned Month

Banned Month
Cannibal Holocaust
Cannibal Holocaust
Bangkok's Jam Cafe is hosting a Banned season this month, as part of its regular Cult Move Night event. The season begins tonight with a screening of Ruggero Deodato's Cannibal Holocaust, the notoriously violent 'video nasty' that inspired the film-within-a-film horror sub-genre. (Previous Cult Movie Night seasons have included Doppelganger Month, American Independent Month, Anime Month, 'So Bad It's Good' Month, Philip Seymour Hoffman Month, and Noir Month.)

03 January 2015

The Governance of China


The Governance of China

The Governance of China (translated from the Chinese 谈治国理政) is an anthology of public statements by Chinese President Xi Jinping. The first entry is Xi’s acceptance speech following his appointment as General Secretary of the Communist Party in November 2012. The book also includes photographs of Xi, one of which, showing the President holding an umbrella, has since been appropriated by pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong.

Most of the book’s texts are speeches delivered by Xi, or diplomatic correspondence signed by him. The only exception, from Rossiya-1 television, is a softball interview with Xi: it was broadcast in Russia (China’s main ally), and Xi’s answers are extended monologues (with no interruptions from the interviewer). In what could almost be a parody of obsequious questioning (p. 113), the presenter asks: “How do you feel as the leader of such a big country? What hobbies do you have? What are your favourite sports?”

Internationally, Xi’s most famous remarks are from a January 2012 anti-corruption speech: “We should continue to catch “tigers” as well as “flies” when dealing with cases of leading officials in violation of Party discipline” (p. 429). The most notorious ‘tiger’, Xi’s potential rival Bo Xilai, is currently serving a life sentence.

Ultimately, The Governance of China is a propaganda exercise. It concludes with an overtly hagiographic Xi biography: “Xi is a man of compassion” (p. 482); “Xi regularly shows a strong sense of responsibility towards the future of the nation” (p. 483); “A dutiful son, Xi often strolls and chats with his mother” (p. 494).

01 January 2015

Broken

Broken
In 2012, Madonna released a limited edition gatefold 12" single, Broken, which is available only to members of her Icon fan club. The pink vinyl record features an extended remix of Broken, which is a previously unreleased non-album track. Previously, Icon members were able to download the exclusive Confessions On A Dance Floor bonus track Superpop.

Dateline Bangkok


matthewhunt.com

2015 will be Dateline Bangkok’s tenth year online. Over the past decade, Thailand has undergone one of the most volatile periods in its political history, with military coups in 2006 and 2014. On the other hand, cultural highlights have included Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (ลุงบุญมีระลึกชาติ) winning the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 2010.

19 December 2014

The Interview

The Interview
The Interview
The release of the new film The Interview has been cancelled indefinitely by its studio, Sony Pictures. Sony had its computer system hacked earlier this month by a group known as the Guardians of Peace. The sophisticated hacking operation was apparently a response to Sony's planned release of The Interview, which was scheduled to open on Christmas Day.

The Interview is a comedy directed by Evan Goldberg and Seth Rogan, starring Rogan and James Franco as journalists who assassinate the President of North Korea, Kim Jong-Un. Its premiere was held in Los Angeles on 11th December, though all subsequent showings were cancelled after the hackers warned cinemas not to screen it. The major American cinema chains all pulled out of plans to show it, and Sony announced today that it would not be released in any form.

Kim's death scene, in which his helicopter is hit by a missile and his head is engulfed in flames, had already been significantly toned down before the film's premiere. Exceptionally, Sony Corp. CEO Kazuo Hirai personally approved the modifications to the scene, insisting that images of exploding flesh and skull fragments should be reduced. Hirai also stipulated that the entire death sequence should be removed from all international prints, and included only in the domestic American version.

Sony's decision to shelve the film entirely is almost unprecedented. It's especially surprising as Kim Jong-Un's father and predecessor, Kim Jong-Il, was ridiculed and assassinated in the puppet comedy Team America: World Police (2004). In that film, Kim was impaled on a spike, and after his death a cockroach crawled out from his mouth. A fictional assassination of American President George W Bush has also been filmed, in the Channel 4 drama Death Of A President (2006).

16 December 2014

Gone With The Wind: A Legacy

Gone With The Wind has been the subject of two recent BBC radio documentaries. Gone With The Wind: A Legacy, part of Radio 4's Archive On 4 series, was broadcast on 14th December. An episode of the World Service's Witness series, about the film's Atlanta premiere, was broadcast yesterday.

Both documentaries are largely based on interviews with several Gone With The Wind cast and crew members, recorded by Barbra Paskin in 1981. Paskin herself presented the short Witness episode, though the longer Archive On 4 programme was hosted by Diane Roberts. The documentaries don't include any dialogue clips from the film, presumably for copyright reasons. Like Steve Wilson's book The Making Of Gone With The Wind, they mark the film's seventy-fifth anniversary.

13 December 2014

The Jakarta Post

The Jakarta Post
The editor of The Jakarta Post, Meidyatama Suryodiningrat, is facing a blasphemy trial in Indonesia, after his newspaper published a cartoon by Stephane Peray (known as Stephff) satirising the Islamic State terrorist group. Suryodiningrat could be jailed for up to five years if he is found guilty.

The cartoon, published on page seven on 3rd July, depicts an armed man raising a skull-and-crossbones flag bearing the words "There is no God but Allah" in Arabic. This slogan forms part of the Islamic shahada, which has been used on black flags by various Islamic terrorist groups including IS. (This year, IS has beheaded several Western hostages on video, echoing the actions of Al Qaeda in 2004.)

The editor issued an apology for the cartoon five days later, in a front-page editorial: "We sincerely apologize for and retract the editorial cartoon... The cartoon contained religious symbolism that may have been offensive. The Post regrets the error in judgment, which was in no way meant to malign or be disrespectful of any religion."

09 December 2014

Art In Time

Art In Time
David
Les Demoiselles d'Avignon
Impression, Sunrise
Just What Is It That Makes Today's Homes So Different, So Appealing?
Art In Time: A World History Of Styles & Movements, edited by Tom Melick, is a history of art in reverse chronological order, from the present to the past. It's published by Phaidon, which also published The Art Museum, The Art Book, The 20th Century Art Book, Design Classics, The Design Book, and the Themes & Movements series.

150 'isms' or artistic styles are included, each in an individual chapter. There are 600 illustrations, including most major works (though not Leonardo's Mona Lisa or Last Supper). Only a handful of the illustrations are full-page, though they're well chosen (Michaelangelo's David; Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon; Monet's Impression, Sunrise; Richard Hamilton's Just What Is It That Makes Today's Homes So Different, So Appealing?).

The book's scope extends beyond the Western canon, to include art movements from India, China, Japan, and Africa. It also features lesser-known Western isms, such as Luminism and Photo-Secessionism. Due to its proliferation of isms, modern art receives significantly more coverage than other eras: the twentieth century spans almost 200 pages, for example, while Classical art is summarised in less than ten pages. Each chapter begins with a single-page essay, though this uniformity also seems disproportionate: the 300-year Hellenistic era receives the same space as the Young British Artists, for instance.

There are numerous other guides to art isms, including Understanding Art (by Stephen Little) and Understanding Modern Art (by Sam Phillips). Styles, Schools, & Movements (by Amy Dempsey) is particularly useful, with its mini bibliographies and comprehensive coverage of art trends since Impressionism. Art In Time has no references, though it covers a wider time period, from Classical art onwards.

The central concept of the book - placing each art movement within a historical context - isn't really effective, but fortunately it's not important anyway. Each chapter is accompanied by a timeline of key events, though they overlap rather confusingly, and there's no real attempt to make any historical connections in the essays themselves. Disregarding the 'art in time' concept, though, the book works very well as a clear and systematic introduction to the history of art.

06 December 2014

"We are badly in need
of a mad computer expert..."

They Used To Call It The Moon
Recently, the British Film Institute has published three letters written by Stanley Kubrick during the pre-production of 2001: A Space Odyssey. The current issue of the BFI's Sight & Sound magazine includes a letter from Kubrick to David Robinson dated 9th April 1966. This week, the BFI posted two Kubrick letters on its website, both from the Kubrick Archive: one to Roger Caras dated 22nd September 1965, and one to Arthur C Clarke dated 31 March 1964.

Extracts from the Clarke letter ("the proverbial "really good" science-fiction movie") have been quoted extensively, and a draft of the letter is currently included in the exhibition They Used To Call It The Moon at the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art in Gateshead, UK. The exhibition opened on 31st October, and will close on 15th January 2015. (A 1975 letter from Kubrick to cinema projectionists was previously published online; I have a circa 1978 Kubrick Christmas card.)

The Decisive Moment

The Decisive Moment
A Bible For Photographers
The Decisive Moment
The Decisive Moment, the first monograph of photographs by Henri Cartier-Bresson, is possibly the most iconic book in the entire history of photography. It was published in simultaneous French and English editions (the French version titled Images A La Sauvette) in 1952, and became highly collectable as it was never reprinted.

The 126 photographs from The Decisive Moment have subsequently appeared in various Cartier-Bresson books, notably The Man, The Image, & The World (2003), though The Decisive Moment remains essential due to the quality and size of its images. The photographs were printed using the heliogravure process, and most were either full-page or double-page reproductions.

Cartier-Bresson's preface to The Decisive Moment has been reprinted in the anthologies Photographers On Photography (Nathan Lyons, 1966) and Photography In Print (Vicki Goldberg, 1971). It was also included, with a new post script, in an issue of Les Cahiers De La Photographie devoted to Cartier-Bresson (#18, 1986). Cartier-Bresson included it in his own anthology of his writings, L'Imaginaire d'Apres Nature (1996), published in English as The Mind's Eye (1999).

Cartier-Bresson was most often associated with photojournalism, though he was arguably the greatest of all photographers. His 'decisive moment' concept is probably best encapsulated by his most famous picture, Derriere La Gare St Lazare, a photograph of a man jumping into a puddle. He died in 2004.

More than sixty years after its original release, a facsimile edition of The Decisive Moment has finally been published. It's available in a slipcase, accompanied by a fascinating booklet written by Clement Cheroux (author of this year's Henri Cartier-Bresson: Here & Now) titled A Bible For Photographers. The reprint is a full-sized reproduction of the original folio, with the same jacket designed by Henri Matisse, though not the supplementary twelve-page Captions booklet (on which the Cheroux booklet's design is based). Curiously, some of the blemishes in the original images have been removed in the new edition (for example, in print 105).

05 December 2014

Graphic Design
Before Graphic Designers

Graphic Design Before Graphic Designers
The term 'graphic design' was coined in the 1920s, though the printing process had always involved a significant element of design. David Jury's Graphic Design Before Graphic Designers: The Printer As Designer & Craftsman 1700-1914 explores "the printer's contribution to graphic design prior to it becoming a profession in its own right".

The book considers graphic design avant la lettre, from both technical and artistic perspectives. Jury traces the history of printing technology, from engraving and letterpress to lithography and photography. He also discusses the various design movements of the period, including Arts & Crafts, Art Nouveau, and stylistic trends in typography. The book itself is attractively designed, with chapters alternating between essays on the development of "jobbing printing" and glossy reproductions of posters, periodicals, and other ephemera.

Jury's survey covers the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, which saw the birth of mass communication after the Industrial Revolution and the emergence of advertising. Published by Thames & Hudson, it includes over 500 colour illustrations. A History Of Graphic Design and Graphic Design: A New History cover the complete history of graphic design. The Book: A Global History includes a chapter on printed ephemera. The Art Of The Print (Fritz Eichenberg) is still the best book on the art and technology of printing, though 500 Years Of Printing (SH Steinberg) and Prints & Visual Communication (William M Ivins) are also useful. Printing Types (Daniel Updike; two volumes) is the standard history of typography.

02 December 2014

The Lost Tapes of Orson Welles


This Is Orson Welles

The Lost Tapes Of Orson Welles was broadcast on the BBC World Service on 30th November, as part of the series The Documentary. It will be repeated tomorrow, and it was first broadcast in two episodes on Radio 4 last year (episode one on 19th December, and episode two on 26th December).

The programme was presented by Christopher Frayling (author of numerous books, including The 2001 File, Ken Adam Designs the Movies, Ken Adam and the Art of Production Design, Spaghetti Westerns, Once Upon a Time in Italy, and Something to Do with Death) and featured extracts of conversations between Orson Welles and Henry Jaglom. The recordings were made at the LA restaurant Ma Maison, between 1983 and 1985 (the year Welles died).

The tapes were also transcribed in the book My Lunches with Orson, and the programme includes interviews with Jaglom and the book's editor, Peter Biskind. The book’s release led to a debate about how much consent Welles had given to the recording or publication of the tapes, though the programme doesn’t address that issue. In fact, the background to the tapes is presented in a surprisingly cliched, simplistic way: “Jaglom met Orson... and the pair soon became firm friends”.

The Jaglom tapes have a predecessor with a more reliable provenance: tapes recorded by Peter Bogdanovich, who interviewed Welles from 1969 onwards. The Bogdanovich tapes were released on four audio cassettes in 1992, and transcribed in the book This Is Orson Welles; they were edited with Welles’s co-operation, and some material was redacted at his request. In contrast, Welles had no control over the Jaglom tapes after they were recorded, and therefore they offer a more candid portrait of the director.

Landmarks
2001:A Space Odyssey

Free Thinking
Sci-Fi
Tomorrow's World
This evening, BBC Radio 3 broadcast a discussion about the influence of Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey. The event took place at the BFI Southbank in London on 30th November, as part of the Tomorrow's World section of the BFI's Sci-Fi: Days Of Fear & Wonder season.

The programme was presented by Matthew Sweet, and featured interviews with guests including Keir Dullea (star of 2001), Gary Lockwood (star of 2001, and author of 2001 Memories), and Christopher Frayling (author of The 2001 File). It's an episode of Radio 3's Landmarks, which is part of the Free Thinking series. A special edition of The Film Programme about 2001 was broadcast on Radio 4 last week.

01 December 2014

Gang Bang

Gang Bang
Cunt Face
Gang Bang, a group exhibition of erotic illustrations, opened at the Toot Yung Art Center in Bangkok on 8th November and will close tomorrow. The exhibition includes two representations of vagina dentatas, both by TRK: an ink drawing titled Cunt Face, and an untitled woodcut print. The woodcut is similar to Roberto Matta's cover illustration for the Surrealist journal VVV (1944).

27 November 2014

The Film Programme

This afternoon's episode of The Film Programme on BBC Radio 4 was a special edition devoted to Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, in which presenter Francine Stock visited the Kubrick Archive. The programme also included an interview with Piers Bizony, author of the limited edition book The Making Of Stanley Kubrick's 2001. There have been several previous 2001 documentaries, notably A Look Behind The Future (produced by Look magazine, 1967) and The Making Of A Myth (Channel 4, 13th January 2001).

26 November 2014

Kubrick Remembered

Kubrick Remembered
Stanley Kubrick: The Masterpiece Collection
Stanley Kubrick: The Masterpiece Collection
Kubrick Remembered, directed by Gary Khammar, is a major new feature-length documentary about the life and work of Stanley Kubrick. Like the more comprehensive Stanley Kubrick: A Life In Pictures (2001), it was made with co-operation from the Kubrick estate, and it includes interviews with members of Kubrick's family and the personal assistants who worked for him. It also features material from the Kubrick Archive.

TV documentaries about Kubrick include Stanley Kubrick: The Invisible Man (Channel 4, 20th June 1996), A La Recherche De Stanley Kubrick (Canal+, 1st September 1999), The Last Movie: Stanley Kubrick & Eyes Wide Shut (Channel 4, 5th September 1999), Remembering Stanley Kubrick (Channel 4, 12th September 1999), Stanley & Us (thirty-eight episodes; Rai Sat, 1999), and Stanley Kubrick's Boxes (More4, 15th July 2008). There have been three Kubrick radio documentaries: Looking For Stanley (Radio 3, 10th January 1999), In The Director's Chair (Radio 4, 14th October 1999), and A Voix Nue (five episodes; France Culture, 21st-25th March 2011).

Kubrick Remembered was given a brief cinema release this month, though it's most widely available as part of Stanley Kubrick: The Masterpiece Collection, a new Warner blu-ray box set. The Masterpiece Collection also comes with a book featuring documents and photographs from the Kubrick Archive.

Warner's first Kubrick DVD/VHS box set, The Stanley Kubrick Collection, was released in 1999 and remastered in 2001. Another DVD/VHS collection, Directors Series: Stanley Kubrick, was released in 2007. A blu-ray box set, titled Stanley Kubrick: Limited Edition Collection in the USA and Stanley Kubrick: Visionary Filmmaker Collection in the UK, was released in 2011.

[After the 1999 Stanley Kubrick Collection, the mono soundtracks of A Clockwork Orange, Barry Lyndon, The Shining, and Full Metal Jacket were replaced by 5.1 mixes; Dr Strangelove's alternating aspect ratio was fixed to 1.66:1; Barry Lyndon was cropped from 1.66:1 to 1.78:1; and The Shining, Full Metal Jacket, and Eyes Wide Shut were cropped from Academy to widescreen format. Unfortunately, these changes persist in the new Masterpiece Collection.]

Diorthosi

Diorthosi Diorthosi
On 21st November, police in Cyprus removed photographs from an art exhibition and charged the organisers with exhibiting obscene material. Diorthosi, an exhibition of photographs by Paola Revenioti, opened at the Old Municipal Market in Nicosia on 20th November, and was scheduled to run for three consecutive evenings.