Little Black Book of Art

Last chance to see this gripping documentary from the award-winning Afghan Star team tells the story of the Afghan presidential election of 2009. A political thriller of sorts, it shows events through the eyes of the leading challengers to President Karzai and the people who risked their lives to make it a free and fair election.

Dir Havana Marking, Martin Herring, UK 2009, 78 mins, subtitles, digibeta

Film showing at the ICA, London at 7.45pm, Cinema 2, Thursday 6 May 2010

Food, Inc. shows 7 – 9, 12, 15 May 2010

The compelling, Oscar-nominated film Food, Inc. is an American documentary film directed by Emmy Award-winning filmmaker Robert Kenner.

It takes us on a journey through the American food industry and examines corporate farming in the United States, concluding that the meat and vegetables produced by agribusiness have many hidden costs and are unhealthy and environmentally-harmful.

The film is narrated by Michael Pollan and Eric Schlosser. The documentary generated extensive controversy in that it was heavily criticized by large American corporations engaged in industrial food production.

Food Inc. is essential viewing and to view the trailer visit www.foodincmovie.co.uk

Click HERE for show times and ticket bookings.

£9 / £8 Concessions / £7 ICA Members

For 4 years running, Filmhouse (Edinburgh’s foremost independent cinema for the last 30 years) has been supporting Africa in Motion (AiM), an African Film festival highlighting the work of film-makers across this continent.

“In only a few years, Africa in Motion has grown into a flourishing and exhilarating festival of cultural diversity and cinematic brilliance. Providing a platform to challenge, engage with and explore issues surrounding the African continent and its films, the festival includes a range of classic and contemporary films – long, short, fiction and documentary.”

2009 is the UN’s Year of Reconciliation, and the theme runs through this festival which runs from the 22 October to 1 November 2009, highlighting some of the world’s most war-torn and trauma ravaged countries. This year 60 films from 23 countries will be screened giving African film-makers the exposure they need.

One of the most talked about films is ‘My Secret Sky’ a hard hitting story of a child soldier, see the film clip below for a taster…

Click HERE for a full list of programmes.

For more information about the organisation, please contact: info@africa-in-motion.org.uk

Nowhere Boy is the feature film directorial debut by acclaimed artist and photographer Sam Taylor-Wood, ex-wife of Jay Jopling, one of the most powerful men in the art world.

Film has always been the source of much of her art and this project, despite being a big leap, seemed like a natural progression from her well-recived short film ‘Love you more’ (2008).

Nowhere Boy received a Lottery funding of ₤1.2 million from the UK Film Council Premier Fund with an additional ₤35,500 from its Development Fund to develop the script. The film also received a grant from Film4 (the film division of Channel 4).

The screenplay for the highly anticipated feature was written by Matt Greenhalgh, and has been selected to close the 53^rd annual BMI London Film festival on 29 October 2009. This will be the first time Nowhere Boy has been shown to the public.

During the making of the film, 42 year old Taylor-Wood fell for her leading man, 19 year old newcomer Aaron Johnson. There is a sense that their relationship might overshadow the film reviews – (they recently announced their engagement), however having been through a fair number of trauma over the years and having survived cancer twice, Sam Taylor-Wood lives her life to the full, and does not fear what the critics might say…

Nowhere Boy is a film based on the book Imagine This: Growing Up With My Brother John Lennon by Lennon’s half sister Julia Baird.

It focuses on the period of Lennon’s early life in 1950s Liverpool when, having been raised by his protective Aunt Mimi (played by Anne-Marie Duff), he becomes reacquainted briefly with his mother, Julia Lennon (Kristin Scott Thomas) who suffered from depression, lived nearby and later died in a car accident. Against the backdrop of his music career and his first steps to stardom, the two women fight for John’s affections. It also focuses on his friendship with future fellow Beatle Paul McCartney played by Thomas Sangster.

Producers negotiated with Yoko Ono for the rights to use some of Lennon’s songs and in addition to these songs, British electronica duo Goldfrapp will be scoring the film.

It’s a handsomely made film with a good lead performance from Johnson and an accomplished debut from Taylor-Wood.

Nowhere Boy is released nationwide on 26 December 2009.

A drama about Eritrean child soldiers from the director of The Story of the Weeping Camel, inspired by the controversial memoir by Senait G Mehari.

The father of 10-year-old Awet (beautifully played by Letekidan Micael) hands her over to the Eritrean Liberation Front (known as the Jebha), where she falls under the influence of a charismatic leader, although her size prevents her from being a fully fledged part of the rebel militia. A powerful film that, by focusing on one story, attempts to represent the experiences of child soldiers everywhere.

Director Luigi Falorni, Germany/Austria 2008, 97 mins, 35mm, subtitles:
released by Metrodome: an exclusive new release

25 September - 8 , 10 – 11 October 2009

£8 / £7 Concessions / £6 ICA Members.
Tues-Fri before 5pm £7 / £6 Concessions / £5 ICA members.
£5 for everyone all day Monday.

Text credit: ICA

Beautiful Losers is a documentary film about the art movement of the same name [ripped off the Leonard Cohen novel] formed around a handful of talented underdogs who found each other at Aaron Rose’s New York gallery, Alleged, in the 90s. While some are undoubtedly more interesting than others (namely Mike Mills, Harmony Korine, Shepard Fairey, Chris Johanson, and the late Margaret Kilgallen), their collective cult influence has been undeniably prolific. Spanning art, design, music and independent film, these are the artists that came from the DIY subcultures of skateboarding, graffiti, etc., and accidentally brought you Street Culture in it’s mainstream form – as sold by Pepsi (Mills), Nike (Geoff McFetridge), and the like.

They certainly weren’t the original or the only exponents, and not all have sold out to corporate advertising. But The Masters in contemporary art have always been masters in their own marketing – top players such as Koons or Hirst being obvious examples. A modus operandi that capitalises on the naivety of the buyer might be obscene to some, but to others it’s admirably audacious, even entertaining. So in the case of Aaron Rose, who “didn’t even know that an art gallery sold art”, and his (beautiful) losers, who maintain that they’re interesting precisely because they’re “un-careerist” and rooted outside of the art world, do the same rules apply?

It would be easy to accuse this film – which inexplicably waxes nostalgic about a scene that’s not even 20 years old – of self-perpetuating its own myth. Speaking to Rose, I realised that dismissing it as propagandist or self-satisfied was missing the point. “It was never really an anti-art movement, because actually there was just no knowledge of the art world” he explains. “It existed outside of that and eventually became a part of it, but it wasn’t even like punk, deciding to be against something, because there was never a manifesto… it was purely about people having fun and making things.”

The point is that Beautiful Losers was never clever enough to be manipulative; in one scene Mills even describes his fellow artists as “awesomely dumb”. As a whole the film is badly structured, lacking in substance and ridden with clichés, such as “real beauty lies in the part of the work that’s off”, “if you want to write yourself into history, you have to Do It Yourself”, blah. A typical product of modernist ego, Beautiful Losers asks only to be understood, and, like its artwork, is about self-expression rather than any meaningful social commentary. The problem is that it expresses itself badly, and in so doing becomes ultimately boring.

But the laziness and immaturity inherent here, as almost unconscious landmarks of that generation’s ennui, are also marks of integrity. The oblivion to / lack of concern for such shortcomings reveals an artistic language that’s simply not judged in terms of success or any other middle-class quantifier. The fact that Beautiful Losers can’t be intellectualised in the way that the commercial art world requires it to doesn’t render it meaningless if it was never intended for that audience in the first place, and if it can influence those for whom it was intended.

Much of the work is in fact both beautiful and interesting, despite any impression you might get from the artists interviewed. Some say you should never meet your heroes, and personally I’d have preferred never to have seen the faces behind the work – but others need role models. Admirably, Rose did not shy away from the suggestion that his documentary distorts our perception of art that was more than capable of speaking for itself. “I do feel like it’s done that and of course that saddens me, but unfortunately it’s just a risk you have to take – to hope that the good that comes out will outweigh the fact that we’ve maybe lost something in people’s ability to look at things for what they are”.

This lot may not have been the first to have liberated art from its establishment, but if they can inspire counterculture groups of the future, like those of the past, then they deserve to be given a voice. And if you really can’t bear the sound of it, Money Mark’s score is at least excellent.

Beautiful Losers (dir. Aaron Rose) is out now

Written by Octavia Wonderland for Notes  From the Underground