Red as Blood
The Company of Wolves
I am more excited than I can describe to announce that together with Sam Bompas & Harry Parr, I'll be presenting the next installment of Scratch 'n Sniff Cinema as part of the Abandon Normal Devices Festival in The Lake District over Easter. The reason for the fizzing tummy bubbles is that the film we'll be presenting is one of my all-time favourites - a truly beautiful yet horrifying oddity, directed by Neil Jordan and penned in partnership with the late, lamented author and mistress of magic surrealism, Angela Carter.
The Yan, Grizedale Forest Park
The Company of Wolves is based upon a series of short stories within her brilliant, aphrodisiac-infused anthology in response to the fairy tales of Charles Perrault, The Bloody Chamber. I'll be announcing at least two key scents closer to the event, but there will be eight in total responding to moments within the film. The location itself will be award-winning forest hideout The Yan, a contemporary yet sensitively designed education and community resource centre designed by architects Sutherland Hussey.
Keep an eye out for ticket sales at the official AND website. Remember - as you're pretty, so be wise. Wolves may lurk in every guise. Now, as then, 'tis simple truth: sweetest tongue has sharpest tooth.
Tales of Two Cities
With an OCD fury not seen since the woman in the Shake 'n Vac advert ground her Valium and mixed it with a glug of Bacardi, I've been plugging the cracks in this site and pasting up former production duties with a vengeance. My personal favourites A Wall is a Screen now have a page to themselves, as do the rapidly expanding MegaPhone team - flying the flag for those of us who see no reason why computer games should progress beyond the Atari era. Once upon a festival, The Light Surgeons conjured up a storm in a Gothic salon and The Royal Opera House treat us to no fewer than twelve outdoor relays in the past five years.
Into The Woods
You can never have enough magic capes, as I discovered earlier last year. Shamefully I have only just got around to documenting this particular project for the Big Screen Liverpool from Charlotte Gould in partnership with moves, although thanks are also due to my friend Mandy Tolley for creating the most intensely red cloak with the biggest button I have ever seen. Yes, even bigger than Kirsty Allsopp's secret cache.
Who Do You Think You Are?
So Many Excuses: Who Do You Think You Are?
...here comes DaDaVisions, a brace of opinionated new screen commissions developed right here in the North West and soon to appear upon TWENTY giant outdoor screens across the UK. Launching as a new strand of DaDaFest, four new artist film and video projects will face-slap shoppers with subversive and alternate interpretations of disability. I'll be posting further information upon each as the week progresses.
So Many Excuses: Who Do You Think You Are?
First up is influential agit-prop trio No Excuses, once fond of chaining themselves to buses to chant "Piss on Pity" and now reformed as So Many Excuses. Mandy Colleran, Mandy Redvers-Rowe and Ali Briggs (who some may recognise as Freda in Coronation Street) have revisited the classic Frost Report sketch from the 1960s featuring the Two Ronnies and John Cleese.
Then a comment upon the British class system but now playfully adapted to explore the stereotypes and labels that the disabled place upon each other, Who Do You Think You Are? is written and performed by SME, produced by Asta Films with vintage styling expertise by Maria Lloyd.
Tickled pink
And so the curtain falls after five days, 15 x 1 hour slots and - as an approximate guess - some 5,000 open-jawed observers for Chris O'Shea's public space sensation. Inspired by Land of the Giants, a massive hand chased and tickled shoppers who jostled and whooped to attract the attention of the unknown (actually automated) operator. As one delighted lady of advanced years remarked, "I haven't had a man's hand all over me like that in years!"
It was especially gratifying that it should reach so many people who would never otherwise be aware of the AND Festival of which this was part, especially the elderly, families, children and those of foreign origin who were able to engage without any language barriers; humour being universal.
Saturday saw a six-hour stretch and double bill with the second appearance of Hungry Hungry Eat Head following this Summer's debut at the Big Screen Edinburgh. Creators Joel Gethin-Lewis and Jody Hudson-Powell had added some new animated elements, resulting in pulsing alien brains, panting tongues and blinking eyes to enhance the experience. Everyone loved clutching and waving the cardboard markers, freed from the snobbish associations of pocket hardware and somehow more magical for it. "How do you do it?" was the often repeated question, and being present in the space we were able to explain the method for different levels of comprehension.
It's great to be able to lift the lid to those of all ages on what can seem out utterly baffling, especially via face-to-face so it remains conversational in tone. It's this aspect in a sense that offers true interactivity, while repeat insistence even when told otherwise that the hand is controlled by a living, breathing person (with some playfully accusing total strangers - "Is it you? Have you got the remote in your pocket?"), offers a fascinating insight to human psychology in attributing human characteristics... in this case, of a benign bum-tickling reincarnation of Benny Hill!