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]

The Colour of Clay

"Look over there! You'll see girls shaping cups. Cups are shaped from within. Otherwise there's not a lot of difference. Afterall a cup is really only a small plate with it's collar up."

Set in one of Wedgwood's factories, sporting fabulous opening credits. The narrator talks exceptionally quickly, so try to keep up.
 
"The solemn cool and restful greens and browns of the trees and the gayer pinks and blues of the flowers, the leader of the unindustrious butterfly and the workshop of that selfconcious modelling [said too fast I can't decipher] of the busy bee.There is different colour which is so much part of our countryside which is reflected in all our trades and crafts. Most of all in the art and science of pottery."


"Isn't it nice to see girls putting handles on cups instead of knocking them off."
I can't remember the time I ever knocked a handle off a cup. I remember smashing a whole cup, but nothing more specific.

British Council Film - Colour In Clay, 1941

Risking it on expired film...

So here are my just desserts. That heart sinking moment collecting photos from the developers and the packet is tellingly thin. But I quite like the 6 survivors.

Hopefully it goes without saying these are entirely unedited. Look out for the squirrel.

Taken on Rollei 35T, Ilford Delta 100 (old. Past it.)

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.

Quietly does it

Whoops. Here's something nice to break the silence. A book! 

The Incomplete Dictionary of Show Birds

When this book arrives in the post, I'll tell you about it.

Potato and parsnip printed Christmas Cards

This Christmas at Site Gallery we've been running a series of Christmas Card and Decoration Making Workshops on Saturdays. I decide to impliment potato printing (along with collaging and stamping), since sourcing a life changing book, by Helen R. Haddad, published 1981 'Potato Printing' (as recently featured by Present and Correct).

Here's some snaps of the workshop and the cards I proceeded to make at home after a little experimentation during the workshops!

Little wonky robin is my only Christmas Card design this year. I ran out of potatoes and switched to a parsnip which I must say worked fine.

Take a look back at past Christmas designs I made if you like:

2011 - Watercolour squirrels & robins scene

2010 - Lino cut Robin prints

2009 - Repeat watercolour Christmas pattern for cards, advent calendar and tags

2008 - Re-interpreted Victorian Christmas Cards - Handpainted

For every minute you are angry...

...you lose sixty seconds of happinness.

A visit to Brighton Biennial - 20 October 2012

- Shipping Container on the beach
First we viewed Urban Exploration in a snug shipping container on the beach. Powerful photographs of international spaces and structures captured by daring photographers, abseiling, sneaking through tiny tunnels, scaling shards, to share superlative perspectives of places we know, from off-limits angles. Or places we wouldn't come close to knowing otherwise.

- Edmund Clark
Edmund Clark is a photographer I have admired for a few years thanks to my good friend Fiona for tipping me off on the brilliant photo book Still Life Killing Time.

Here in Brighton, Clark exhibits Control Order House, a photo series as well handled as many of his other works capturing lives during - and post-  incarceration. This house of intense control, under full time scrutiny, unbeknown to neighbours, an anonymous existence of sorts. This house is used to detain people without judicial process under the Prevention of Terrorism Act. "Revealing the identity of the controlled person or the location of the house would be an offence."

I've worked with him on two occasions, once interviewing him on his work about Guantanamo prisoners, and later commissioning Clark for a photo essay for Article Magazine. The resulting photographs commemorated scenes from the Falklands war, Clark scattered and photographed broken toy soldiers on a surface of appropriated background photographs of Mount Longdon. An subtle arrangement which made for a moving reimagining of loss and destruction.

- My Brighton Biennial highlight was Omer Fast's 5000 Feet is Best.  I get keenly wrapped up in skipped narratives, and overlayed stories, other stories, other stories, back to the main story - not sure what is the main story. In this case a former drone operator is interviewed by Omer Fast. He's telling how he controlled unmanned planes and had them fire at targets - people and militia in Afghanistan and Pakistan - from a Las Vegas Desert base. But there are all these other stories of other people that he keeps telling, and some are harrowing, others compelling - good stories. Stories that are good and easy to tell again. Somehow the confusion sheds light on the workings of a drone operators mind full of skewed distant realities.

The project’s title refers to the‘optimum’ firing position of the drone plane.

I reluctantly share it here, if you can see it in Brighton then don't watch it online. Our encounter with the film was appropriately dark, so dark someone tripped over me and grabbed my head for rebalance.


5,000 Feet is the Best from Commonwealth Projects on Vimeo.


Finally worth a solid mention, Fabrica has The Beautiful Horizon, a long-term collaboration between young Brazilians living on the streets of Belo Horizonte with artists Julian Germain, Patricia Azevedo, Murilo Godoy.

Photography is the mediating tool between the artists and the street children, and extends to us as the viewer. Fabrica have a sensitive and fascinating presentation of this vast archive of photographs all taken in Belo Horizonte by young people growing older, each granted a camera and taught to use it. Suspician turns to friendship as the artists build trust with the children over years and gain an insight into lives played out in a poor, disadvantaged location. From death, joy, escapism, confusion, to contentedness, all of which can be read in the people, faces and situations portrayed in the photographs. 
 
Photography is the route through which we gather up their stories, and through which the young people can take pride in using this medium to tell us how things are for them. Editing out the moments of life, they are photographers, quite simply.

Before leaving Fabrica I also bought Julian Germain's book, For every minute you are angry you lose sixty seconds of happiness.

'I met Charles Albert Lucien Snelling on a Saturday in April, 1992.

He lived in a typical two up two down terraced house amongst many other two up two down terraced houses… It was yellow and orange. In that respect it was totally different from every other house on the street. Charlie was a simple, gentle, man. He loved flowers and the names of flowers. He loved colour and surrounded himself with colour. He loved his wife. Without ever trying or intending to, he showed me that the most important things in life cost nothing at all. He was my antidote to modern living.'

Julian Germain

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See my archived post on Brighton Photo Biennial in 2010

12 MONTHS OF NEON LOVE Book Design

This summer I designed a book for artists Victoria Lucas and Richard William Wheater for their project,

12 MONTHS OF NEON LOVE.

Pages reveal a selection of the most beautiful, compelling images of neon artworks, which changed monthly to read lines extracted from songs (all containing the word love) for a short time blazing gloriously over the industrial town of Wakefield. The book has four essays which explore the various outcomes of the project.

I'm delighted to have designed this book for Victoria and Richard, a difficult task to reduce down to the final collection of images, and to communicate the affecting and profound nature of this year long public art commission. I hope I did their wonderful project justice.

Special thanks to my good friend Jon Cannon for his time and assistance on the production - there's a gorgeous frame pattern on the inside page for which I am indebted to him!

You may buy a copy from Site Gallery - here 


12 MONTHS OF NEON LOVE 
Victoria Lucas and Richard William Wheater

This limited edition book includes full colour images of the installed neon lyrics, in addition to documentation from behind the scenes and essays from Victoria Lucas and Richard William Wheater. Each copy is numbered and signed.

12 Months of Neon Love is a collaboration between Victoria Lucas and Richard William Wheater, and began on St Valentines day 2011. The project is formed using a sequence of twelve lyrical statements, borrowed from well-known songs that feature the many configurations of love. Presented over a year in large red neon text, twelve expressions are visually re-presented to an unsuspecting audience going about their everyday lives on the roof of Neon Workshops in Wakefield.

Budapest - a choice of photographs, set #3 (Electricity)

At the Hungarian Electrical Engineering Museum, meet a security guard downstairs who sends you into the museum to meet an old man in a lab coat, busy entering data on an old PC, he'll take your entry fee. Then he'll demonstrate generators and motors from the 19th Century, speaking only Hungarian to describe the effects and voltages, and he'll tell you to stand back, preparing you only mildly for the noisiest of cracking electrical currents. It's the dream science lab distanced from the protected learning in schools at present - thrilling. They also have an extensive display of light bulbs through the ages, switches, the earliest washing machine and some beautiful neons outside. And don't miss the amazing electrotechnical posters hanging in the stairwell.

It also has the world’s largest supply of electricity-consumption meters.

I liked these light switches even more when I noticed they were all, 

for some reason, labelled 'tart'

 All photographs taken by me on my second Pentax Spotmatic II