Showing posts with label film. Show all posts
Showing posts with label film. Show all posts
Sunday, 15 May 2011
Wednesday, 13 April 2011
Friday, 08 October 2010
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The Lovers - a short surrealist film from BlackMilk Productions
Soon after completing Regression in September this year, Ronnie and myself (DR-BENWAY) finalised the script of our latest movie, The Lovers. We began filming on September 19 to finish final edits on October 4. Three locations in Cape Town were selected: an apartment in Gardens, an industrial area in Salt River and the sea front in Mouille Point. Even though the film took about a month to complete from final concept to screen, due to it being worked on over weekends and after hours, The Lovers was completed in about 56 hours....Read more here
(The film contains a poem of mine also called The Lovers)
(The film contains a poem of mine also called The Lovers)
Sunday, 05 September 2010
(Un)veiling by Mandilakhe Yengo
A short film by Mandilakhe Yengo, starring Alude Mahali, and based on my poem 'Corner Cafe' from the collection, Today is their Creator. The film was premiered as part of South Africa's City Breath Festival of Video Performance and Poetry.
Monday, 17 May 2010
(Un)veiling by Mandilakhe Yengo
The City Breath Festival of Video Performance and Poetry includes the showing of (Un)veiling, a short film by Mandilakhe Yengo, starring Alude Mahali, and based on the poem 'Corner Cafe' from Gary Cummiskey's collection Today is their Creator.
(Un)veiling explores voyeurism and the power of the gaze. In the midst of the bustle of constrained living spaces in the city, privacy becomes a necessity but isn’t always a given.
The city has eyes; it covers and uncovers and someone is always watching- hidden or revealed. Using the poem as its premise, (Un)veiling looks at the fine line between seeing, being seen and not seeing.
Sunday, 10 August 2008
Aryan Kaganof's Velvet - Helge Janssen
It is utterly impossible to view this short film and not be affected.
Art/film does not come more cutting edge than this.
But it is absolutely impossible to take Kaganof at face value. To do so is to get entangled in a web of personal likes and dislikes, revealing ones own psychological imperfections, and this serves no purpose whatsoever.
Never more so as in this 11 minute film.
The challenge then, if one feels up to it, is to empty one’s head of all psychological baggage, step into a clear space of NOW, and view what we are being shown in a state of heightened and relaxed alertness. (Tolle)
On an evolutionary scale I’d say that is a pretty high order.
Having said that, and even so, the emotion and the intellect are prodded to a point where they run amok, and the situation becomes an exercise in crisis management. Perhaps I am a ‘poetic epileptic’ for if I were an epileptic, these words and images would have had the same effect as a strobe.
And the words, the words, the words, hammering, hammering.....‘dirty girl’....not least of them by Gary Cummiskey.....drilling...the cut-up flashes of phrases coming furiously......all the while ‘emptying one out’, pausing just long enough to allow the viewer a foothold, then shooting off again, stripping stripping, stripping......becoming as naked as.....
....the visuals of Taylor Rain large, unabashed.....
....but Kaganof is not about to use the word ‘physical’ (introductory information) lightly, and herein lies the very reason why this film is not pornographic: a very pretty woman is exploring her lower orifices without apology, without taint, without trying to stimulate the viewer, she herself is not ‘self pleasuring’, she is matter-of-fact, controlled: she becomes at once her own 'doctor', a researcher and a pioneer....
As such Rain/Kaganof/Cummiskey together stab right into the heart of the matter: where’s the taboo?
This review originally appeared on KZNSA Gallery.
Art/film does not come more cutting edge than this.
But it is absolutely impossible to take Kaganof at face value. To do so is to get entangled in a web of personal likes and dislikes, revealing ones own psychological imperfections, and this serves no purpose whatsoever.
Never more so as in this 11 minute film.
The challenge then, if one feels up to it, is to empty one’s head of all psychological baggage, step into a clear space of NOW, and view what we are being shown in a state of heightened and relaxed alertness. (Tolle)
On an evolutionary scale I’d say that is a pretty high order.
Having said that, and even so, the emotion and the intellect are prodded to a point where they run amok, and the situation becomes an exercise in crisis management. Perhaps I am a ‘poetic epileptic’ for if I were an epileptic, these words and images would have had the same effect as a strobe.
And the words, the words, the words, hammering, hammering.....‘dirty girl’....not least of them by Gary Cummiskey.....drilling...the cut-up flashes of phrases coming furiously......all the while ‘emptying one out’, pausing just long enough to allow the viewer a foothold, then shooting off again, stripping stripping, stripping......becoming as naked as.....
....the visuals of Taylor Rain large, unabashed.....
....but Kaganof is not about to use the word ‘physical’ (introductory information) lightly, and herein lies the very reason why this film is not pornographic: a very pretty woman is exploring her lower orifices without apology, without taint, without trying to stimulate the viewer, she herself is not ‘self pleasuring’, she is matter-of-fact, controlled: she becomes at once her own 'doctor', a researcher and a pioneer....
As such Rain/Kaganof/Cummiskey together stab right into the heart of the matter: where’s the taboo?
This review originally appeared on KZNSA Gallery.
Saturday, 02 August 2008
Seedy world of sex for sale
Christmas Eve in Johannesburg is the setting for independent filmmaker Aryan Kaganof’s SMS Sugar Man, which recently premiered on the sidelines of the Grahamstown Arts Festival. The film, written and directed by Kaganof, focuses on Sugar Man (played by Kaganof), a pimp who is losing his grip on reality, and his three prostitutes, the Sugars, as they travel in his 1966 Valiant to hotels in the city to service their clients.
The film is unique in a number of ways, mainly because it is the first feature-length film to be have been shot on a cellphone camera.
“The natural evolution of film is away from film and towards digital projection technologies,” says Kaganof.
The cellphone camera provides film with its next great historical milestone, and evidence of this is that all over the world many festivals are springing up to advance this direction. Hollywood is also embracing the medium, with Spike Lee doing a cellphone film for Nokia.
“I am proud SA was the first country to produce a full-length feature film generated using this technology,” says Kaganof.
The film is a bit pixilated in places, but rather than signalling inferior quality, the pixilation adds to the sense of the seediness of Sugar Man’s world — one of sordidness, exploitation, kinky sex, pimps, prostitutes, junkies, pushers and gangsters.
It adds a dreamlike vagueness to the action, the reality of which is open to question, while simultaneously evoking a realistic and immediate feel, like a homemade film or documentary.
One of the central themes of the film is that of identity. In its first moments, the Sugar Grace (Leigh Graves) asks: “Who are you, Sugar Man?” Identities are mostly kept concealed throughout the film. The Sugars do not reveal their real names to clients, who in turn are simply referred to as Wallets.
It is an anonymous world where sex is merely a financial transaction, and who people really are is not important. The Sugar Selene (leading actress Deja Bernhardt) refers to Sugar Man as wearing a mask, which he says is his business mask.
The characters often use cellphone cameras in the film, almost interrogating each other with their questions, searching for the truth. This also suggests a film within a film, as if the characters are indulging in play-acting.
There are striking similarities between the figure of Sugar Man and Jesus Christ, especially in his relationship with the Sugars, which parallels Christ’s relationship with his disciples.
There is also the theme of betrayal by a favourite. Biblical references are frequent throughout the film, and one Wallet appears to be a vicar (“appears” because it could be fantasy role-play) who spouts biblical passages while receiving a blowjob.
Setting the film on Christmas Eve provides an opportunity to explore tensions. Christmas Eve might generally be a warm, traditional family occasion, but it is also, as Sugar Man points out, the most depressing time of the year — especially for the lonely, from whom pimps can make good money.
When Selene says to Sugar Man that she feels something bad is going to happen, his response is that it is Christmas Eve, so how could anything bad happen? But the sense of doom is reinforced by Atilla the hit-man’s insistence that he feels “bad things will happen”.
The film opens with the fairy-tale introduction of “Once upon a time”, but there is little that is innocent in this story. At one point, Selene puts a transvestite Wallet to bed as if he were a child, tucks him in and tells him a bedtime story while masturbating him.
The feel-good movie genre is one I have always viewed with a certain malevolent distaste,” says Kaganof. “This film introduces South African audiences to the feel-bad movie, a genre of my own that I have finely honed and shaped over the past 20 years.”
The film is filled with loneliness, such as that of Sugar Man and of the Wallets. In one powerful scene, a Wallet (John Matshikiza) calls Selene “darling” and asks her what her name is. Selene leaves without saying a word, leaving him to his loneliness.
“I have to give full credit to John Matshikiza for digging very deep into himself, as an actor and as a man, and finding a character that is recognisable and deeply tragic,” says Kaganof. “It was a great privilege for me to work with John, whose chemistry with Deja Bernhardt was, literally, heartbreaking.”
Kaganof goes on to quote French philosopher Jean Baudrillard: “Even good and evil dream of each other from the depths of their loneliness.”
Feelings matter little in this world of sex for money, and it is notable that none of the sexual encounters in the film result in penetrative sex.
“Real sex, penetrative sex,” says Kaganof, “cannot happen in a world of masks and screens, the world of simulacra. But this is the world of the new SA, the world of the spectacle, the world of the mall and the world of the reality of the illusion of freedom, the illusion of democracy, the reality of the illusion of progress. The illusion that we have choices that will make us happy.”
In the film, Sugar Man says: “Money is God.” There are several close-up shots of money being counted, and it is money that binds Sugar Man and the Sugars together. Sex, relationships, trust, and even life and death seem to be purely a matter of financial transaction.
Yet this sordid world in which the film is set is in many ways not very different from the “respectable” middle-class world of the suburbs, of what is “decent” and acceptable, or from the legal financial transactions that take place every day in business.
Kaganof says: “The underworld microcosm of the film’s milieu serves, of course, as a reminder that this is how it’s down here in the new SA, the cashocracy.”
One of the main presences in the film is that of Joburg: its streets, people, garages and convenience stores, the phallic Hillbrow tower, the seedy as well as plush hotels with their equally lonely and mysterious empty corridors. It is a setting reminiscent of Jean-Luc Godard’s ’60s film, Alphaville, to which Kaganof acknowledges a debt.
“Alphaville is a seminal film of the ’60s,” he says. “Nowhere is the extreme horror of the modernist dystopia better realised than in that film. What SMS Sugar Man does is update this dystopian perspective in Johannesburg.”
With barely a superfluous shot or word spoken, SMS Sugar Man takes us to the ugly heart of the city — a nightmarish, deceitful underworld in which human decency and self-respect are lacking. All that matters in this milieu is money and gratification, but it comes at a price.
First published in The Weekender August 2, 2008
The film is unique in a number of ways, mainly because it is the first feature-length film to be have been shot on a cellphone camera.
“The natural evolution of film is away from film and towards digital projection technologies,” says Kaganof.
The cellphone camera provides film with its next great historical milestone, and evidence of this is that all over the world many festivals are springing up to advance this direction. Hollywood is also embracing the medium, with Spike Lee doing a cellphone film for Nokia.
“I am proud SA was the first country to produce a full-length feature film generated using this technology,” says Kaganof.
The film is a bit pixilated in places, but rather than signalling inferior quality, the pixilation adds to the sense of the seediness of Sugar Man’s world — one of sordidness, exploitation, kinky sex, pimps, prostitutes, junkies, pushers and gangsters.
It adds a dreamlike vagueness to the action, the reality of which is open to question, while simultaneously evoking a realistic and immediate feel, like a homemade film or documentary.
One of the central themes of the film is that of identity. In its first moments, the Sugar Grace (Leigh Graves) asks: “Who are you, Sugar Man?” Identities are mostly kept concealed throughout the film. The Sugars do not reveal their real names to clients, who in turn are simply referred to as Wallets.
It is an anonymous world where sex is merely a financial transaction, and who people really are is not important. The Sugar Selene (leading actress Deja Bernhardt) refers to Sugar Man as wearing a mask, which he says is his business mask.
The characters often use cellphone cameras in the film, almost interrogating each other with their questions, searching for the truth. This also suggests a film within a film, as if the characters are indulging in play-acting.
There are striking similarities between the figure of Sugar Man and Jesus Christ, especially in his relationship with the Sugars, which parallels Christ’s relationship with his disciples.
There is also the theme of betrayal by a favourite. Biblical references are frequent throughout the film, and one Wallet appears to be a vicar (“appears” because it could be fantasy role-play) who spouts biblical passages while receiving a blowjob.
Setting the film on Christmas Eve provides an opportunity to explore tensions. Christmas Eve might generally be a warm, traditional family occasion, but it is also, as Sugar Man points out, the most depressing time of the year — especially for the lonely, from whom pimps can make good money.
When Selene says to Sugar Man that she feels something bad is going to happen, his response is that it is Christmas Eve, so how could anything bad happen? But the sense of doom is reinforced by Atilla the hit-man’s insistence that he feels “bad things will happen”.
The film opens with the fairy-tale introduction of “Once upon a time”, but there is little that is innocent in this story. At one point, Selene puts a transvestite Wallet to bed as if he were a child, tucks him in and tells him a bedtime story while masturbating him.
The feel-good movie genre is one I have always viewed with a certain malevolent distaste,” says Kaganof. “This film introduces South African audiences to the feel-bad movie, a genre of my own that I have finely honed and shaped over the past 20 years.”
The film is filled with loneliness, such as that of Sugar Man and of the Wallets. In one powerful scene, a Wallet (John Matshikiza) calls Selene “darling” and asks her what her name is. Selene leaves without saying a word, leaving him to his loneliness.
“I have to give full credit to John Matshikiza for digging very deep into himself, as an actor and as a man, and finding a character that is recognisable and deeply tragic,” says Kaganof. “It was a great privilege for me to work with John, whose chemistry with Deja Bernhardt was, literally, heartbreaking.”
Kaganof goes on to quote French philosopher Jean Baudrillard: “Even good and evil dream of each other from the depths of their loneliness.”
Feelings matter little in this world of sex for money, and it is notable that none of the sexual encounters in the film result in penetrative sex.
“Real sex, penetrative sex,” says Kaganof, “cannot happen in a world of masks and screens, the world of simulacra. But this is the world of the new SA, the world of the spectacle, the world of the mall and the world of the reality of the illusion of freedom, the illusion of democracy, the reality of the illusion of progress. The illusion that we have choices that will make us happy.”
In the film, Sugar Man says: “Money is God.” There are several close-up shots of money being counted, and it is money that binds Sugar Man and the Sugars together. Sex, relationships, trust, and even life and death seem to be purely a matter of financial transaction.
Yet this sordid world in which the film is set is in many ways not very different from the “respectable” middle-class world of the suburbs, of what is “decent” and acceptable, or from the legal financial transactions that take place every day in business.
Kaganof says: “The underworld microcosm of the film’s milieu serves, of course, as a reminder that this is how it’s down here in the new SA, the cashocracy.”
One of the main presences in the film is that of Joburg: its streets, people, garages and convenience stores, the phallic Hillbrow tower, the seedy as well as plush hotels with their equally lonely and mysterious empty corridors. It is a setting reminiscent of Jean-Luc Godard’s ’60s film, Alphaville, to which Kaganof acknowledges a debt.
“Alphaville is a seminal film of the ’60s,” he says. “Nowhere is the extreme horror of the modernist dystopia better realised than in that film. What SMS Sugar Man does is update this dystopian perspective in Johannesburg.”
With barely a superfluous shot or word spoken, SMS Sugar Man takes us to the ugly heart of the city — a nightmarish, deceitful underworld in which human decency and self-respect are lacking. All that matters in this milieu is money and gratification, but it comes at a price.
First published in The Weekender August 2, 2008
Tuesday, 08 July 2008
Velvet to be screened at the KZNSA Gallery
Aryan Kaganof’s film Velvet is based on a cut-up prose sequence called April in the Moon-Sun by poet Gary Cummiskey.
Composed in 2002 and originally published on the online literary journal, donga, April in the Moon-Sun is characterised by astonishing surreal images that shift between London and Johannesburg. Throughout its hallucinatory pages lurks the whore-spirit, Dirty Girl.
When donga went offline in 2006, Cummiskey published April in the Moon-Sun through his Dye Hard Press. The print run was limited to 100 copies, one of which was sent somewhat belatedly to Kaganof.
Towards the end of 2007 Kaganof announced his intention to make a short text film which would be his interpretation of the work. In January this year, Velvet was born.
Lasting 11 minutes and 32 seconds, containing electronic music by US experimental duo Matmos and culminating in what Kaganof describes as “physical poetry” by US porn star Taylor Rain, the film begins in total darkness with background sounds reminiscent of John Cage’s work, and which hint at what is to come.
From darkness – nothingness – is born the word, as the text of April in the Moon-Sun starts to appear on screen. The music of Matmos, a track titled Burroughs, reflects the cut-up nature of the work. The spirit of Dirty Girl is invoked as she starts to appear in the narrator’s brain.
From the word is born the image – the physical manifestation of Dirty Girl, played by Taylor Rain, who engages in some naughty, dirty exploration. Dirty Girl’s sudden appearance after about six minutes of text comes as a shock to our eyes just as her activities may come as a shock to our bourgeois sensibilities.
Velvet will be screened at the KZNSA Gallery, in Glenwood, Durban, from August 5 to August 24.
Composed in 2002 and originally published on the online literary journal, donga, April in the Moon-Sun is characterised by astonishing surreal images that shift between London and Johannesburg. Throughout its hallucinatory pages lurks the whore-spirit, Dirty Girl.
When donga went offline in 2006, Cummiskey published April in the Moon-Sun through his Dye Hard Press. The print run was limited to 100 copies, one of which was sent somewhat belatedly to Kaganof.
Towards the end of 2007 Kaganof announced his intention to make a short text film which would be his interpretation of the work. In January this year, Velvet was born.
Lasting 11 minutes and 32 seconds, containing electronic music by US experimental duo Matmos and culminating in what Kaganof describes as “physical poetry” by US porn star Taylor Rain, the film begins in total darkness with background sounds reminiscent of John Cage’s work, and which hint at what is to come.
From darkness – nothingness – is born the word, as the text of April in the Moon-Sun starts to appear on screen. The music of Matmos, a track titled Burroughs, reflects the cut-up nature of the work. The spirit of Dirty Girl is invoked as she starts to appear in the narrator’s brain.
From the word is born the image – the physical manifestation of Dirty Girl, played by Taylor Rain, who engages in some naughty, dirty exploration. Dirty Girl’s sudden appearance after about six minutes of text comes as a shock to our eyes just as her activities may come as a shock to our bourgeois sensibilities.
Velvet will be screened at the KZNSA Gallery, in Glenwood, Durban, from August 5 to August 24.
Monday, 11 February 2008
Velvet
Velvet is a new film by Aryan Kaganof based on my cut-up prose sequence April in the Moon-Sun. The film traces the progress from nothingness to the creation of the word, and from the word the creation of the image - the manifestation of Dirty Girl.
With Taylor Rain as Dirty Girl. Music by Matmos. 11 minutes, 32 seconds.
With Taylor Rain as Dirty Girl. Music by Matmos. 11 minutes, 32 seconds.
Sunday, 09 September 2007
April in the Moon-Sun goes on film
The multitalented Aryan Kaganof (film maker, poet, novelist, publisher and visual artist) is working on a short textfilm of my cut-up prose piece April in the Moon-Sun, published by Dye Hard Press last year. Kaganof, who recently directed SMS Sugar Man, says the cutup nature of the work would serve the animated-image medium well, but with single-frame editing, it is going to take a while.
I will keep you posted!
I will keep you posted!
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