Film Review: Princess Mononoke by Studio GhibliA prince, Ashitaka, from the far east regions of a mystical land, is forced to venture west after being branded by a fatal curse from the touch of a demon, wherein he finds an ongoing war between humanity and the forest gods, whose home is threatened by the humans’ industrial progress. He is enthralled by a princess, San, who is raised by wolves, biologically human yet warring against her industrial kin.
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Exhibition Review: Inferno by Jean Clair at Scuderie del Quirinale, Rome until January 23rd, 2022 (extended).The more I reflect on this exhibition, the more I marvel at its intelligence, its artistry, its power. Little details continuously return to my memory and deepen the impression I first received, that of walking, from room to room, along a very well-crafted journey. The visitors’ experience tries to reproduce, while representing and studying it, Dante’s voyage in hell, recounted in the first cantica of his Divine Comedy. This reproduction is not literal, it is not a copy of the poem, episode after episode. Rather, it is somehow an emotional reproduction, from the entrance into a different space, to the increasing terrors shown, to the final return to our everyday world.
Screening Review: Mangrove + Q&A with director Steve McQueen and Small Axe Consultant Paul Gilroy on 22/10/21The Film: A hush, a darkness, and then the lilting rhythm of a Caribbean tune (‘Long Long Time’ by The Versatiles); so began my evening at the BFI watching Steve McQueen’s masterful film Mangrove. As the film’s first scenes washed across the screen, the loose ease of the soundtrack belied the gravity of the story soon to unfold. "...who truly has the right to safe, private space in the old Empire’s capital?"
Exhibition Review: Henri Cartier-Bresson, Revoir Paris (Seeing Paris Again) at Musée Carnavalet, Paris until October 31st, 2021.
I would never have guessed how popular a photography exhibition could be, until I found myself in the midst of a crowd, waiting for my turn to look at a square piece of printed paper, and having to fight to retain the place I had conquered for a moment longer, without giving in to the pressure on every side. Perhaps this is an exaggeration – but never had I ever seen such interest for a collection of photographs. The rooms dedicated to Cartier-Bresson at the Musée Carnavalet, the museum of the history of Paris, geometrically organised so as to offer the visitor interesting perspectives on to the next row of pictures, allow you to research, to look, to discover. What did Paris mean for Henri Cartier-Bresson? Why did he always come back? Why is it that his photography, in some mysterious way, resembles the city so much? |