#antenna documentary film festival 2018

[falkenscreen]

FILM FIGHT CLUB S2E41: SF3 SMARTFONE FLICK FEST & WHAT IS DEMOCRACY’S ASTRA TAYLOR

Where we review the best smartphone filmmaking on offer at the SF3 Gala and chat all things What is Democracy with Director Astra Taylor, screening at the Antenna Documentary Film Festival – tune in Wednedays 7:30PM on 2SER and subscribe to the podcast!

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[thewidowstanton]

The Widow’s Best of 2018

In what has been another miserable year in many respects, the arts have been more important than ever in keeping spirits high. Here are some of the things we’ve liked. They lean a little, but – suffering as we are from ‘circus fatigue’ – certainly not all the way, towards that art form. But first we have something to say. Last year when we posted our ‘Best of’ round-up, one of our favourite cabaret acts had a fit of pique and unfollowed us and blocked us because she hadn’t made the cut. So this time, before offending anyone else of a similarly delicate disposition, we’d like to point out that to be considered for our list, we have to have seen your show – even if it’s an old one – during the year. So, now that’s clear, let’s proceed. All shows are in London unless otherwise stated.

BEST SHOW: Knot by the hand-to-hand duo of Nikki and JD – American Nikki Rummer and Frenchman Jean-Daniel Broussé – seen (again) at The Place. This show has it all: skill, emotion, humour, dance, music. We simply loved it! Don’t miss it on tour again in 2019.

MALE CIRCUS ARTIST OF THE YEAR: Laci Simet, whose 40-year career has encompassed appearances on high wire, Wheel of Death, motorbike on the wire, skywalks and more recently The Semaphore – a recreation of the Koch Sisters revolving act – during which he balances on a knife edge that is constantly falling away from him. His was also the MOST READ WIDOW INTERVIEW.

FEMALE CIRCUS ARTIST OF THE YEAR: Rhiannon Cave-Walker from Fauna, not just for her stunning skills but because she’s such lovely person. Fauna ran at Flora Herberich’s Battersea Circus Garden during Wandsworth Arts Fringe.

BEST ACT: The flying Russian cradle in Cirque du Soleil’s OVO at the Royal Albert Hall, Barcode’s Russian bar with flyer Alexandra Royer and bases Eric Bates and Tristan Nielsen, seen at Cirque de Demain in Paris, and anything Lewie West did in Gravity & Other Myth’s Backbone, which ran at the Queen Elizabeth Hall.

BEST SURPRISE APPEARANCE: The stupendous Rowan Heydon-White, who popped up unannounced in Circa’s Peepshow during the Underbelly Festival.

MOST INNOVATIVE CIRCUS SHOW: The holograms used in Circus Roncalli.

BEST THEATRE SHOW: Mother by Peeping Tom Dance at the Barbican during the London International Mime Festival.

MOST WELCOME RETURN FROM INJURY: Lydia Harper, who returned to Cirque du Soleil’s TORUK after four months off following hip surgery. And Andrew Adams of The Silhouette. Having fallen 30ft from the Wallendas’ high wire and being badly hurt, he recovered and appeared with Sasha Harrington at Cirque de Demain.

BEST CIRCUS 250 SHOW: Chris Barltrop’s self-penned one-man show, Audacious Mr Astley – seen at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe – tops the year celebrating the birth of circus in the UK. Chris also gets BEST COSTUME for Astley’s beautiful and authentic red coat.

BEST MC: The inimitable Calixte de Nigremont, whom we met at last at Cirque de Demain.

BEST MAGIC TRICK: Yann Frisch appearing a pack of cards from nowhere during Le Paradoxe de Georges in his spectacular movable theatre Le Camion-Chapiteau – which gets BEST VENUE – in Paris, and Eric Chien’s Ribbon act to become 2018 FISM close-up champion.

MOST ARRESTING IMAGES: Phia Menard’s show about suicide, Les Os Noirs, at the Montfort Theatre in Paris.

BEST ONGOING NIGHT: Rose Thorne and Benjamin Louche’s Double R Club at Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club.

MOMENT OF WONDER: Cai Guo-Qiang’s exquisite daytime powder fireworks. Plus Lewie West skidding on this hands in Backbone, and Daniel Cave-Walker balancing on his head in Fauna. Look, no hands!

BEST CIRCUS CABARET: Black Cat Bohemia at the Underbelly Festival at Southbank Centre. A simply wonderful show! It transcended the format, which can often look tired, and its line-up included our interviewees Lj Marles, Katharine Arnold and Nicolas Jelmoni, as well as others knock-out acts such as the lovely Jo Moss.

MOST UNIQUE SHOW: Crème de la Dregs by Dina Martina at Soho Theatre.

BEST ‘IN CONVERSATION’: Performance artist Rose English and Stine Hebert during Crying Out Loud’s Circus Sampler at Somerset House.

BEST DANCE: B-boy Elihu Vazquez in Barely Methodical Troupe’s SHIFT, seen at the Norfolk & Norwich Festival, and German Cornejo and Gisela Galeassi’s thrilling duets in Tango After Dark at the Peacock Theatre. 

BEST DANCE CIRCUS: Motionhouse’s Charge also at the Peacock. BEST CIRCUS FILM: Psycho-Circus with Christopher Lee from 1966, in which a circus becomes the location for stolen loot and murder!

MOST FABULOUS: Régis Marvin Merveille N'Kissi Moggzi in the joyous French teen movie/documentary Swagger, which is set in one of the country’s most under-privileged neighbourhoods.

BEST INTERVIEW: Gaylord Fields speaking to the tireless Petula Clark on WFMU. Hoping for some UK concerts in 2019.

BEST MUSIC IN A CIRCUS SHOW: Elliot Zoerner and Shenton Gregory’s soundtrack for Backbone, played live onstage.

MOST SHOWBIZ: Mr Murray Hill. Nobody cared when his show at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe drifted off course and never came back. It was enough to be in the New York icon’s presence. 

BEST SHOWBIZ BOOK: Spun Into Gold: The Secret Life of a Female Magician by Romany, Diva of Magic.

BEST BURLESQUE: Dita Von Teese, naturally, plus the stunning Zelia Rose, but certainly not the rest of the cast in The Art of the Teese at the Carré in Amsterdam.

BEST TV CHARACTER: Ciro di Marzio from Gomorra and Joséphine ‘Maître’ Karlsson from Engrenages/Spiral.

MOST IMPRESSIVE MEMORY FEAT: Laura Linney in I Am Lucy Barton at the Bridge Theatre, who was word perfect in this 90-minute monologue.

BEST GIG: Winter Kills (Piano Magic) at Antenna Studios, Barry Adamson at Union Chapel, and Sevdaliza at The Barbican.

BEST SOLO SHOW: Songs for Nobodies, Bernadette Robinson’s astonishing portrayal of five divas: Garland, Cline, Piaf, Holiday and Callas, at Wilton’s Music Hall.

MOST UPSETTING: The news that the spectacular French variety show Le Plus Grand Cabaret du Monde, hosted by Patrick Sébastien, is ending in June 2019. Sob!

MOST CHARISMATIC: Isabella Rossellini in her theatrical lecture, Link Link Circus, at the Queen Elizabeth Hall; a sort of follow-up to her wonderful Green Porno.

ONE TO WATCH: Mieke Lizotte, currently with Gravity & Other Myths.

MOST ANTICIPATED IN 2019: Aurélia Thiérée’s Bells and Spells at the Theatre Royal during the Norfolk & Norwich Festival, and Isabelle Huppert in the film Greta!

MOST MISSED: Circus artist/actor Raphael Cruz, who died at just 32, and our lovely friend Merian Ganjou of the fabulous Dior Dancers, who died aged 79. Keep on flying, Merian!

Look out for the first of our interviews in the new year, which will be with one (or more) of the artists from Cirque Eloize show Hotel, which is coming to the Peacock Theatre in February.

Pic credits: Fabio Affuso; Nicholas Brittain

Follow @TheWidowStanton on Twitter

[beatiewolfe]

Film | Orange Juice for the Ears | Virtual Design Festival | Dezeen

VDF premieres Beatie Wolfe's documentary Orange Juice for the Ears

Marcus Fairs | 9 hours ago  Leave a comment

To kick off today's VDF collaboration with Beatie Wolfe, we're exclusively streaming the online premiere of the singer-songwriter's documentary Orange Juice for the Ears: from Space Beams to Anti-Streams.

The documentary, which has never been streamed online before, will be available free to Dezeen readers for the duration of Virtual Design Festival.

The film premiere will be followed at 1:00pm by an exclusive preview of Wolfe's forthcoming environmental protest piece Red to Green, and an essay by Wolfe in which she explores the power of music to improve the human mind and ease the suffering of people with dementia.

At 5:00pm UK time Wolfe will conduct a live interview with Dezeen founder Marcus Fairs, followed by an exclusive performance of her music.

Wolfe "pioneers new formats for music"

Commissioned by the Barbican Centre last year, the 30-minute Orange Juice for the Ears documentary explores the work of Wolfe, a singer-songwriter based in Los Angeles.

The Barbican Centre described Wolfe as "a singer-songwriter of raw acoustic indie channelling Leonard Cohen and Elliott Smith, Wolfe also pioneers new formats for music."

Beatie Wolfe is a singer-songwriter based in Los Angeles

Directed, shot and edited by Ross Harris, the film premiered at the Barbican Centre in London in October 2019, followed by an industry screening in Los Angeles. The film was commissioned as part of Barbican Centre's Life Rewired season, which explored how artists are responding to rapid technological change.

"With the season investigating the impact of the pace and extent of technological change in our culture and society, and looking at how we can grasp and respond to the seismic shifts these advances will bring about, there are few artists who exemplify this exploration as much as Beatie Wolfe," Barbican Centre said.

Music "can lift us out of depression"

The film's title comes from a quote by the late neurologist Oliver Sacks, who explored the relationship between music and the human mind.

"Music can lift us out of depression or move us to tears — it is a remedy, a tonic, orange juice for the ear," Sacks wrote in his book Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain.

Virtual Design Festival is hosting an exclusive stream of Wolfe's documentary Orange Juice for the Ears

"But for many of my neurological patients, music is even more – it can provide access, even when no medication can, to movement, to speech, to life. For them, music is not a luxury, but a necessity.”

Born in London, Wolfe has pioneered new ways of combining music with design and technology. She released her debut EP, Burst, as an iPhone app in 2010, making her one of the first artists to explore the potential of apps as a format for musicians.

Pioneer of new musical formats

In 2013, her debut album 8ight was released on vinyl, in book form and as the "world's First 3D interactive album app".

Her second album, Montagu Square, was recorded live at 34 Montagu Square in London, which was at various times the home of Jimi Hendrix, Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, John Lennon and Yoko Ono.

Raw Space was issued as a set of NFC-enabled business cards

Recorded in the room where The Wind Cries Mary and Eleanor Rigby were written, the album was accompanied by a "musical jacket" created by fashion designer Michael Fish, who dressed rocks stars including Hendrix, David Bowie and Mick Jagger.

Intended as a way of recapturing the lost emotional connection listeners used to have with vinyl album sleeves, the tailored jacket contained near-field communication (NFC) chips that allow tracks from the album to be played when a smartphone is held up to the garment.

Album recorded in "world's quietest room"

The Montagu Square album includes the track Take Me Home, an instrumental version of which was used as the soundtrack for the Virtual Design Festival launch movie.

Wolfe's 2017 album Raw Space was recorded in Bell Labs' anechoic chamber, a room described as "the quietest room in the world".

Related story

Lockdown is an "exercise in presence and gratitude" says Beatie Wolfe

The album was released as the "world's first live 360 AR stream". The album later became the first to be broadcast into space via the Holmdel Horn Antenna.

The Raw Space album was later issued as a set of NFC-enabled business cards, each of which was designed by a different graphic designer.

Solo exhibition at V&A

In 2018, London's V&A museum hosted a solo exhibition of Wolfe's work titled The Art of Music in the Digital Age: a series of world-first designs.

"Beatie Wolfe presents a series of album innovations that explore how technology can be used to recapture a sense of storytelling, ceremony and tangibility for music in the digital age," wrote the V&A about the show, held as part of London Design Festival 2018.

The documentary artwork is by Kizzy Memani of ArtCenter College of Design.

About Virtual Design Festival

Virtual Design Festival runs from 15 April to 30 June 2020. It intends to bring the architecture and design world together to celebrate the culture and commerce of our industry, and explore how it can adapt and respond to extraordinary circumstances