LOLA, or The Girl Who Lost Her Mind.

2012, film school was coming to a close and I realised too late, that I wished I had had the balls & the ego, to pursue directing and it's specific creative tyranny.

I also realised that to make a film you don't need much, not really.

And so, with the help of three close friends, the talented Nat B, Bene L &  E Rogers, we workshopped two characters for one week, in my bedroom.

The resulting story, about two girls who torture animals for fun, was bleak at the best of times. We had improvised everything from the moment they met, the height of their fascination with one another, to the moment Alice visits Lola 5 years later, in an institution.

We chose to capture the moment Alice confronts Lola and leaves her. 

We shot it in one day.

The edit took three years. 

Possibly nothing is as horrifying as watching the footage you directed over and over and over and over. 

You are made increasingly aware of it's many short fallings technical and otherwise: the lack of varied points of view, of angles, the absence of movement to cut on, how little of what you wanted to convey has made it through the lens, your own general incompetency - it was nightmarish. Over the course of those 3 years I sat down many times to finish the edit, but couldn't.

I was told that I was being hard on myself. Personally, I just think of it as honesty.

After a drunken conversation I finally knew how to finish it. Just cut the shit. Use the rest.

Making sense is over rated in short film.

I think ultimately, it's brief. The narrative is foetal at best, but I let myself hope that the final film is restrained and somewhat emotive. 

And so in 2015, I had finished my first short film, not just that, but it was screened at the Tabacco Factory Theatres in Bristol.

Despite the film's shortcomings, if that isn't a finishing project, what is?

Kate x

147 Days, or Ignore This Post

4 months, 3 weeks, 6 days since I closed STREAKS, moving away from blogging to focus on writing fiction.

And how did that go for you? I hear you wonder.

HAVE YOU WRITTEN A WHOLE NOVEL? You gasp!

No.

I have not. 

What I have done is try to adhere to the two rules I set myself after writing that post:

1. Finish what you start.
2. Be so good they can't ignore you.

I needed to know that once I had a big idea (or a small one) I could see it through. And now, today, I know: I can finish.

Now, while this output is hardly 'so good' it simply CAN'T BE IGNORE, OH MY GOD!  in order for some one to ignore you, you've at least got to be in front of them.

I am abysmal at self promotion. And so: STREAKS. 

This blog has always made me feel comfortable putting my Maxwell shaped voice into the world, and gosh-darn-it, hoping for the best.

Over the next few weeks, I want to share with you some of the things I have finished, as well as some that I have started and hopefully you will think they are, at least a little bit, good.

Truly - Maxwell

Film // ROUND UP 2013

A year in Film: The Good, The Excellent, The Wishlist...

The Good

Solid films. I liked their aesthetics, they were made in good taste, but in terms of story telling, of structure or character, they did not find their mark. 

Ain't Them Bodies showed so much promise but was emotionally under-developed, the characters feeling so close to whole, perhaps a lot was lost on the cutting room floor. Also Ben Foster is a goddamn delight. (Oh and check out the style post here!)

The Place Beyond The Pines arguably had some of this year's most spine-tingling cinematic moments, but ultimately was consumed by it's own over-powering ambition.

Silence found one beautiful, calming, pensive, introspective emotional note but never reached beyond.

Frances Ha was very enjoyable and has real emotional value for the magic 20-something bracket, but it's self awareness kept it in the realm of parable instead of human drama. (Although this is not necessarily a problem.)

The Excellent

The Act of Killing // Leviathan // Spring Breakers // Star Trek Into Darkness (holyquinto)

The Act of Killing left me speechless and retching. Not only is this excellent, challenging filmmaking, it has such a crucial cultural and historical resonance. It should be compulsory viewing. We are all capable of the act of killing. This film is our own confrontation with the monsters that are sleeping in all of us. Of the horrors we can enact. And the importance of our guilt, shame and knowledge of this.

Leviathan also had me retching. This intense epic is unlike anything I have seen.The best outline I can give: an experimental documentary film about trawler fishing that creates a palpable sensory experience of life at sea. It's disgusting, terrifying and mystical.

Spring Breakers was another hypnotic number. A sickly neon fairy tale, it's dreamlike nature, unreal plot and alien color palette was trance-like and transporting.

Star Trek Into Darkness... Fast, funny, inventive, never taking itself too seriously but always having a lot at stake, this was blood-pumping science-fiction. The end credits featuring the original overture was outright boner inducing. Proper space adventure.

The Wishlist

Here are some films I missed but am SUPER KEEN to see:

• Mud
• Blue Jasmine
• Before Midnight (hell I need to catch the whole series)
• Much Ado About Nothing
• Blackfish
• 12 Years a Slave
• Blue is the Warmest Colour
• Only God Forgives
• American Hustle
• Epic of Everest (restored footage from the 1920s climb of Everest, premiered at the LFF earlier this year)
• The Great Beauty
• The Pervert's Guide to Ideology
• The Selfish Giant
• Wadjda

The list, as always, goes on. But that's the bulk of it!

[As a side note I saw  Bling Ring and A Field in England, so you don't have to. Oh. My. Lord.]

So! Who saw what!? Thoughts? Feelings? 

2014 - COME AT ME BRO

Film // LA NOTTE (1961)

Il Deserto Roso (The Red Desert) by Antonioni, is a long, quiet, alien film. It's characters guarded & broken.

It is cryptic.

But then, at it's climactic point, the protagonist voices with total simplicity and clarity exactly what she is feeling. It took my breath away, this moment of understanding, in the space of ten words, the whole film pulled together and the effect was devastating.

La Notte, a beautiful, black and white, melancholy passage through one day and one night, strikes the same chord in this same brilliant, moving manner.

During the day the landscape is industrial, urban, unforgiving and ugly. At night they attend a party, the scene is lavish and extravagant.

The story is episodic: a visit to a dying friend, a seduction by a deranged inmate, watching boys set off rockets in the fields, a night club.

It is a life-like narrative. Haphazard incidents culminating within us to shape our decisions, emotions and self-perception.

The characters are like islands. Each isolated. Communication has broken down.

Until the final scene. As dawn rises and we lie in the sand bank of a golf course. As two lovers discover the fatal truth. Expressed once more, in total clarity.

It is beautiful. it hurts.

La Notte is an absolute bruiser, captivating throughout every cryptic scene.

Watch it :)

Music + Film // THE AQUARIUM (Day 11)

ALRIGHT :) So. I want to talk about two uses of this song that have really moved me. One in film and one in podcast/radio. On both occasions it has left me with a sensation of almost religious awe, fear and longing, a mysticism, a promise, a charm.

My first notable encounter with The Aquarium was in Terrence Malick's epic Days of Heaven.

The tingling, magical tune, so reminiscent of the prelude to Disney's Beauty & The Beast, is steeped in childlike wonder but intertwined with an unmistakable malice, lurking quietly, beautifully, under the surface. So to experience this delicate melody merged with the sweeping imagery crafted by Malick was a truly awe-inspiring thing. The fairy tale tones fuse with the vast fields and the isolated characters to create an alien world: a familiar American beauty but with the all the bewitchment of a day dream.

Next and more recently, the track was used on This American Life a scintillating & engrossing story-based podcast. Every one should be regular listeners of this, it kicks ALL THE ASS.

If you already are a regular podcast listener you'll know of TAL & perhaps what I'm about to go onto, if not then I would really encourage you to listen to the 7 minute prologue of the episode in question to get the full force of the story before reading on (due to SPOILERS).

7 Minutes of your life, and I can promise, they will be well spent - listen. 


The podcast in question: Secret Identity's prologue deals with a familiar tale, a character in costume, whose true identity is protected. Paul Bunyan, a giant statue at the Tress of Mystery park, talks. How? Who is his voice? We know this is not magic, that there is nothing supernatural about this situation, and yet, all the park employees, from the family owners down to the gift shop workers maintain the masquerade that Paul Bunyan is real. So what happens when a park employee casually let's slip that sometimes... he 'does Paul Bunyan'? Ira, our narrator, is taken round the back of Paul Bunyan, to a door in his shoe.. And up inside him.

There he discovers the truth. This is the real Paul Bunyan. It has all the morbid fascination of a decaying corpse, rotting innards and all. It is a grit & grim reality. 

The pace of the story telling, in its purest form (verbal narration) is perfect, the suspense, the anticipation engrossing. 

And there is it, that haunting, enticing, spellbinding melody. 

Indeed, the detailed vocal description of this moment, rising up the ladders, and entering this chamber where park employees sit for hours, 'doing Paul''s voice is set to The Aquarium. 

Once again we are confronted with this incredibly powerful merger of magic and malice. The fairy tale melody contrasts strikingly to this description of the death of magic.

The illusion is broken. The truth is out. We know its secrets.

And yet, as we listen, as we reside in Paul Bunyan's decaying chest, we ourselves are part of that magic now.

And there is something spellbinding about that.

[Days of Heaven (1978), T Malick]

Image Credit

Movie Mezzanine