Le Quattro Volte

This is the most beautiful film. I posted it here five years ago but it had disappeared, so catch it now while you can, before it goes again. It’s a film unlike any other. Time passes slowly from one life to another. From goatherd to goat to tree to charcoal.

We each have four successive lives within ourselves; each one contained within the others. We are mineral; we are made of salt, water and organic matter. We are vegetable; like plants we breathe, reproduce and nourish ourselves. We are animal; we have imagination, memory and knowledge of the outside world. In the end we are rational beings; we possess will and reason. We each have four distinct lives within ourselves… and so we must discover ourselves four times.

Frames of reference

It Is Not My Music

There’s a celebration of Don Cherry at the Barbican tonight (Don Cherry Tribute). Sadly I can’t go. So I’ll put this video here as a consolation. And today I’ll rummage through my CDs and I’ll shake the Cherrytree. Its fruits have many flavours and taste of many places. According to Richard Williams, “he collapsed the distance between the supposedly primitive and the supposedly sophisticated more effectively than any musician I can think of.”

This film from 1978 is about Don and Moki Cherry and others who lived with them in the school house in Tågarp, Skåne, Sweden, in the 1970s and onwards. It includes sequences from SoHo, New York, and Moki Cherry’s textiles on the walls in Hästveda and Long Island City. With Rashied Ali, James Blood Ulmer, Nana Vasconcelos, Denis Charles, Huss Charles, etc. A film by Urban Lasson.

If you enjoyed this you might also like to see For Don Cherry.

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Gone To Earth

A film for a housebound Sunday afternoon; a wild creature held captive… Continue reading “Gone To Earth”

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Being John McLean

This time last year, as relief from the winter gloom, we went down to Margate to see an exhibition of paintings by Patrick Heron. This year there’s no need to travel quite so far; the Art Space Gallery in Islington is full of winter sunshine until the end of January. I don’t know why I’ve never been before. It’s an intimate series of rooms and alcoves and niches, presently framing some wonderfully joyful bursts of colour by John McLean. It’s a memorial exhibition for a sharp, bright and generous spirit. Continue reading “Being John McLean”

Frames of reference

Le Quattro Volte

Six years ago I posted a trailer on Frames of Reference for this magical film by Michelangelo Frammartino, Le Quattro Volte (The Four Times). Now, at last, here’s the whole thing. It’s a film unlike any other. Time passes slowly from one to another. These are some words from the trailer…

We each have four successive lives within ourselves; each one contained within the others. We are mineral; we are made of salt, water and organic matter. We are vegetable; like plants we breathe, reproduce and nourish ourselves. We are animal; we have imagination, memory and knowledge of the outside world. In the end we are rational beings; we possess will and reason. We each have four distinct lives within ourselves… and so we must discover ourselves four times.

Frames of reference

Patience (After Sebald)

This modest, immensely enjoyable documentary is about one of my favourite books, ‘The Rings of Saturn’ by the German poet and critic W G Sebald, who was born in 1944, taught for much of his adult life in this country, mainly at the University of East Anglia, and was killed in a motor accident in 2001. It was first published in German in 1995, translated into English three years later and is an account of a walking tour of Suffolk, the people he meets, the places he visits, and the historical and literary reflections prompted by what he sees and senses, taking his mind around the world. Suffolk becomes a sort of palimpsest for his eloquent, precise, lugubrious, often drily witty meditations about war, death, destruction and decay, about memories and continuities and the feeling that nothing entirely disappears.

Grant Gee’s film should make anyone want to read ‘The Rings of Saturn’ and the rest of Sebald’s relatively small but exquisite oeuvre, some eight or nine books in all.

Philip French

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The Phantom Revue

The Ghost Cat Phantom Revue (to give the full title) is an annual Darktown cabaret, part of the Cadaver Clamjamphrie, held at the Starlight Hotel, every halloween. The revue have also been known to perform around St. Within’s Day too.

The Cat People, Domino & Rufus, inspired by the great Jacques Tourneur film, will appear on stage and tell polite jokes, which the audience may or may not find amusing. Continue reading “The Phantom Revue”

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Mio Pomodori (1)

On holiday in Italy last year, we were surprised and amazed by the supermarket tomatoes, so different to the usual British varieties. Now, with holiday season approaching again, I was looking back through our photos, and this one was pretty much the first I took. And then I discovered there were lots more that I’d overlooked, so here are a few of the freshest and ripest. Continue reading “Mio Pomodori (1)”

Frames of reference

Patience (After Sebald)

This modest, immensely enjoyable documentary is about one of my favourite books, The Rings of Saturn by the German poet and critic WG Sebald, who was born in 1944, taught for much of his adult life in this country, mainly at the University of East Anglia, and was killed in a motor accident in 2001. It was first published in German in 1995, translated into English three years later and is an account of a walking tour of Suffolk, the people he meets, the places he visits, and the historical and literary reflections prompted by what he sees and senses, taking his mind around the world. Suffolk becomes a sort of palimpsest for his eloquent, precise, lugubrious, often drily witty meditations about war, death, destruction and decay, about memories and continuities and the feeling that nothing entirely disappears. Continue reading “Patience (After Sebald)”

Frames of reference