“(…And then there are all the lost films.)”
— the final line of Nicole Brenez’s essay, “Forms 1960-2004: ‘The Critical Faculty Invents Fresh Forms’” in ed. Michael Temple & Michael Witt, The French Cinema Book (BFI, 2004)
The thing that has weighed most on my mind about this blog, since I started writing in it exactly six months ago, is all the cultural events I never got around to writing about. It’s not that I have something brilliant and insightful to say about each and every piece of art I encounter (although I know most critical insights I have had came through writing)—but I have this instinctive feeling I can’t shake: this feeling that writing about art really matters. Not just on a personal level, as a way of working through the experience and helping others work through it; but on a broader level, as part of an ongoing description of and engagement with a cultural scene.
For me, this scene is naturally Dublin, but writing about art I see abroad is just as essential as a way of bringing new perspectives and ideas to bear on my local culture, and my own thinking—and though the art in which I’m actively involved in is film, writing about all kinds of art is even more essential. The segregation of the arts is tiresomely and damagingly prevalent these days, especially when it comes to cinema. It not only creates false double standards for the criticism of different arts (compare the way in which book reviews and film reviews are handled in the Irish Times) but figures a stagnant containment of each form from each other, preventing the insights and perspectives of different forms to infiltrating each and expanding one’s view as either a critic or an artist. And anyway, saying you only like film is no better than being one of those jerks who only likes one kind of music. On top of all this, there’s the baser argument that in our present world, art that’s written about exists “more” (that is has more of a life) than art that isn’t written about.
So, it’s about making links rather than erecting boundaries, and describing and engaging critically with culture in a way that seeks to keep it alive, and make it better. However, despite my ongoing commitment to that endeavour, my ongoing commitment to many other endeavours has meant that I never wrote about the following plays, films, dance shows, exhibitions and gigs. I’m sorry I didn’t, because it would have been worth it, especially in a country where there is very little consistent coverage of art in the media (and even less worth reading), and as a consequent very little engagement, especially across different mediums. I don’t know if we even have any serious blogs dealing with art at all in this country, despite it being the perfect format for such an enterprise. (If you know any and you’re out there, please say hello.)
So here, for posterity, and in the hope that I might someday return to them, is everything that’s been left unsaid:
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BERLIN (June)
• Fucking Different New York (various, 2007), the International
• “The Masterpieces of French Painting from The Metropolitan Museum of Art: 1800-1920″, Neue Nationalgalerie
ITALY (September-October)
• Dillinger e Morto (Marco Ferreri, 1969)
• Medea (Tonino de Bernardi, 2007)
• Capricci (Carmelo Bene, 1969)
• Stefano Junior (Maurizio Ponzi, 1969)
• L’Eau Froide (Olivier Assayas, 1994)
• Corpus Callosum (Michael Snow, 2002)
• Once Upon a Time (Corinna Schnitt, 2006)
• De Sortie (Thomas Salvador, 2005)
• You Made Me Love You (Mirando Pennell, 2006)
• Pyramids/Skunk (John Smith, 2007)
• Twist (Alexia Walther, 2006)
IRELAND (July-December)
• John and Jane (Ashim Ahluwalia, 2005), Galway Film Fleadh
• Saphir (photography and two-screen projection), Zineb Sedira, Temple Bar Gallery
• This Dancing Life, choreographed by Sara Rudner (Irish Modern Dance Theatre), St Michael and John’s Church
• [EM] (jazz trio), with panel discussion: “Regeneration Berlin: jazz in a changing city”, the Sugar Club
• Seomra Spraoi’s weekly film screenings.
• The Undertaking (Cathal Black, 2007), Stranger Than Fiction festival
• Mosney (Nicky Gogan & Paul Rowley, 2007), Stranger Than Fiction festival
• Iraq in Fragments (James Longley, 2007), Stranger Than Fiction festival
• Kicking a Dead Horse (Sam Shepard), the Abbey Theatre
• Chekhov’sUncle Vanya, directed by Robin Lefevre, the Gate Theatre
• “Documentary in the 21st Century” National Film School Conference, DLIADT
• Pamelia Kurstin (theremin player), the Ark, DEAF
• Featherhead (dance/music collaboration with Gyohei Zatsu, Itaru Oki and Trevor Knight), DEAF
• Jenny Lindfors, Crawdaddy
• Ben Kritikos and the Happy Gang, Bewleys Cafe Theatre
• I Can’t Make it Without You, choreographed by Liz Roche (Rex Levitates), Project Arts Centre
(Still image from Guy Debord’s Hurlements en favor de Sade [1952].)