News! Website launch and blog

"Hello new website"

 www.JaneFaram.com will house the majority of my writing (and a little artwork). It's my new,  neat online archive.

Faramaufait.blogspot.com (you are here), will be more explorative of broader ideas and specific experiences, from encounters with art to things I trip over on and offline - only (mostly) the good things. My blog Faramaufait will tell the less polished back story.

To be 'Au fait' means to be kept abreast of the latest developments, so as I keep abreast - please keep an eye.

Also you can find me on Our Favourite Places and Dig Yorkshire. 

The Spirit of 45 review for Dig Yorkshire

The Spirit of 45 

Ken Loach 

Screening at Showroom Cinema, Sheffield

Review for Dig Yorkshire

The Spirit of 45 is the latest documentary to come from British social realist filmmaker Ken Loach. For some, this film will be music to the ears, or an inspirational education for those oblivious to the success of Britain’s post-war recovery. To others, extremely partisan, left wing and idealistic. Welcome to Loach’s celebration of 1945; the year when energies once concentrated on fighting the war were shrewdly re-concentrated upon building better lives for the British people, avoiding similar stagnation and severe unemployment to that which followed the First World War.

Loach the filmmaker and man is the perfect listener and lets the people tell the story of the age through their own words. In an attempt to capture the spirit of ’45, bottle it, and release it today. His approach to filmmaking is kindred to the era which he celebrates - granting time for others to be heard and accounted for. Interviewees share hard-hitting stories of ‘poverty parks’, dirty knees and shoeless feet or hiding from the doctor’s collector - before the NHS was founded, costs were incurred as soon as the doctor’s foot crossed the threshold. 

Loach’s film does not feel intensely manufactured but quite natural. It has factual basis, with archival footage and historical documentation. Contemporary interviews with economists and modern day surgeons used to juxtapose with the older voices. We meet elderly ex-miners still deeply affected by the injustice of pit closures. An outstanding character is a lovely Liverpudlian who recalls reading the Ragged Trousered Philanthropist in the 50’s and no longer did he wish to be impoverished or politically powerless.

Substantial decisions and rapid action were essential to rebuilding Britain and general morale post-war. The Spirit of 45 does well to stress the importance of the Beveridge report. William Beveridge set about to challenge the five 'Giant Evils' of 'Want, Disease, Ignorance, Squalor and Idleness'. His report underpinned future social legislation and the founding of the welfare state by Clement Atlee when he became Prime Minister. One of the most moving moments of the film is seeing Atlee’s modest and gracious speech accepting his position, and devoting himself to the delivery of a new era, through his socialist Labour Party.

Look out for the sight of Lady Thatcher. It incited an audibly acidic reaction in the cinema audience – a sudden, stark juxtaposition with the optimistic triumphs of socialism and nationalism. Loach does this for dramatic, comedic effect and I think we’re wise to take it as such. The film skips years ahead to this point, to trigger an emotive reaction to the deep plummet into privatisation, and missing the slow trickle away of socialism over the decades. 

Loach is perhaps aiming for The Spirit of 45 to be a call to arms. He is certainly not delivering such inspiring material to leave us without cause for concern and definitely not without nostalgia. Today we are obviously not driven by post-war recovery. All the same, The Spirit of 45 illustrates a society acting for the greater good and not for the individual.  His interviewees, young and old, are vexed by the graveity of the present situation and speak volumes for having a social conscience. The spirit of the welfare state is not entirely forgotten, but it is undernourished. Loach reminds us that we are the people with the power to fight for it.

The Spirit of 45 is screening at The Showroom Cinema in Sheffield from 15^th March, and 40 other cinemas nationwide, and is set for DVD release on April 15^th.

This Working Life: Steel

100 years ago in Sheffield, Harry Brearley discovered a rustless steel alloy which forged a strong, shiny new future for a city and a nation. To celebrate this anniversary, Sheffield’s Showroom Cinema are to screen a series of British Film Institute archival films revealing the great feats of design, labour and love which sustained this remarkable industry.

The Showroom have selected from a BFI film set collectively entitled This Working Life: Steel. A voyage into the history of the steel industry; from the everyday man and woman and the way in which steel offered structure and survival to their communities and families,   how steel stood a metaphor for strength and national pride, forging a steadfast international reputation for Britain. Also in documentaries we see the masterful feats of engineering that were perfected and delivered across the country and overseas.

Highlights include a 3-minute film ‘Parkgate Iron and Steel Co, Rotherham’ (1905) exposing steel manufacturers at work and in ‘feisty form’. ‘Women of Steel’ (1984) delivers the crucial story of women’s roles in the manufacturing process, and Penny Woolcock’s ‘Northern Newsreel No 7’ (1987) looks at fascism and unemployment as the steel industries began to close down.

The Steel industry offered a rich, exuberant material to filmmakers, and as it evolved, so did filmmaking technology. This is a fantastic opportunity to appreciate all of that history and the beauty of the manufacturing process, in tapestries of sound, ‘dazzling’ Technicolor, animation, rudimentary documentary footage and hilarious propaganda films created to protect and perfect the British industry from decline and de-regulation.

Celebrating 100 years of steel at the Showroom Cinema

This Working Life: Steel

Saturday 23 February 6.15pm - book tickets here

[Preview written for DigYorkshire.com]

New Year, New Writing

I've been busy at my keyboard!

- As a new contributer for Dig Yorkshire 

reviews: 
My Fair Lady, Crucible Theatre
Christmas Crackers, Milennium Gallery
Life of Pi, Showroom Cinema
Deities at the Bottom of the Garden,exhibition by Richard Bartle
Vacuum Days, publication by Tim Etchells

- Writing for Corridor 8 online

reviews:  
The Red Headed League 

- Plus I pitched to review Alternative Histories: New York Art Spaces, 1960-2010

for AN Interface and was sent a copy to do just that, it's an extremely inspiring publication. I'll post the review soon!

And very excitingly I will be contributing as a writer and illustrator to the new Our Favourite Places website, to launch in March 2013. Celebrating Sheffield just as we should for all of it's eccentricities and simplicities.