Orion

Did my first day of volunteering at the BFI London Film Festival '10 today. Basically this involved me standing outside the doors handing out 'educational resources' for half an hour, watching the film, then standing outside collecting 'feedback forms' for 10 minutes. Pretty easy work, but I am doing it for free, so c'est comme ci comme ça.

The film was called Orion, directed by Zamani Esmati. It was an Iranian film about an unmarried student who loses her virginity and is arranging to have her hymen sewn back together. The film was shot on location without filming permits for fairly obvious reasons, but it had some very nice shots considering the difficult nature of filming.

I'd never seen an Iranian film before, and it made me realise that a lot of what I know about different cultures comes from watching foreign films. Although clearly what you see of another culture on screen is not necessarily anything like what you see in real life (We don't all live like Skins characters over here- I haven't had a sexy kissing party in weeks), there is obviously a lot about a culture which you can learn from a film. I've seen plenty of British, American, French, East Asian, German, Spanish, etc. cinema, and so despite only having been to very very few of the places I've seen on the screen; I have been able to see concentrated bursts of what creative people in those countries have to say about their lives.

It's a shame that in many countries around the world, the cinematic output is monitored by governments in the way that it is in Iran, and that this means that people don't ever get to see or experience how people live in other cultures, or hear about the issues which exist in every day life for people across the globe.

Erotic Fiction: The first five minutes of Nigella

This isn't really erotic fiction, it's a blow by blow account of Nigella Kitchen: Episode 2, Hurry up, I'm Hungry.

Two giant pink fists decorate a door; out of which Nigella's lustful face bursts. She walks towards the camera, giving walls flirting glances, and doors lingering touches, before leaning back over a sink, pushing her breasts towards the ceiling and pouting longingly. Cut to Nigella looking directly towards the camera. She talks about gratification, something about food. Cut to a brown fluid spurting onto a pile of meat from off camera. Potatoes; cake; cleavage; pizza. Prawns. Nigella carries a tray, Nigella says the word "lager-ita" whilst opening her eyes wide, like a drunk baby deer. The words "Hurry up I'm Hungry" decorate the screen, presumably made using 'WordArt'. Nigella is opening her blinds. Why are we in her bedroom first thing in the morning? Stock footage of transport and busy Londoners. Cut to Nigella standing next to a bright pink, plastic, curvaceous, enormous whisk. She uses words like "pudding" and "smugness" as though she can't quite fit her lips around the vowels, and quickly pours cream into her pink whisk. She shoves almost half a piece of marmalade-heavy toast into her mouth and continues talking into the camera with her mouth full of butter; desperately trying to distract the viewer from the fact that all the while, she was unwrapping pre-packaged cake and arranging it on a plate. She pours Cointreau into a marmalade jar and shakes it; cruelly shaking side to side, knowing only too well what a up-and-down cocktail shaking motion could do to the British public. She pours the thick, lumpy fluid onto her cake-plate. "Oh look at these gorgeous golden globules." The golden globules shine knowingly in the sunlight; oozing from their jar and sitting on the pale golden flesh of the cake, like spunk. Nigella flicks her shiny hair, Nigellas hand wraps around an orange, and she grates it painfully. "I want bold bright strips, not sad little tangly weeds." She looks into the camera, and some poor gentleman somewhere turns the television off sadly; a far off look of regret decorating his features. Now the juice. She squeezes the orange, letting go in a way that she never did with the jar, she pumps at those orange halves with an insouciant grace, but it's over quickly. Next, the cream: She doesn't like the cream whipped too stiffly, she tells us, a twinkle in her eye; before scooping the piles of sloppy, thick, wet udder juice on top of the mess she's made on her plate. The "desert" looks out of place on a plate; it would be more at home on a freshly bathed stomach. She punctuates this ridiculous confection with soft fruit; "bouncy and proud", juice, "seeping into the cream". She takes the pile of pleasure, locks it away in a cupboard, applies lipgloss to her suspiciously ample lips and leaves.

National Poetry Day

People on the internet keep saying it's national poetry day. I haven't researched this claim or done anything to find out about what national poetry day is about or supposed to mean or represent; instead, I am going to post on my blog the poem which was my favourite as a child. As you will soon see, this was my favourite poem because it is clearly about me and I appear to be dead in it. As you can probably imagine, both of these things filled me with a kind of lusty glee. Here is the poem:

Imogen- Walter De La Mare

Even she too dead! all languor on her brow,
All mute humanity's last simpleness,--
And yet the roses in her cheeks unfallen!
Can death haunt silence with a silver sound?
Can death, that hushes all music to a close,
Pluck one sweet wire scarce-audible that trembles,
As if a little child, called Purity,
Sang heedlessly on of his dear Imogen?
Surely if some young flowers of Spring were put
Into the tender hollow of her heart,
'Twould faintly answer, trembling in their petals.
Poise but a wild bird's feather, it will stir
On lips that even in silence wear the badge
Only of truth. Let but a cricket wake,
And sing of home, and bid her lids unseal
The unspeakable hospitality of her eyes.
O childless soul--call once her husband's name!
And even if indeed from these green hills
Of England, far, her spirit flits forlorn,
Back to its youthful mansion it will turn,
Back to the floods of sorrow these sweet locks
Yet heavy bear in drops; and Night shall see
Unwearying as her stars still Imogen,
Pausing 'twixt death and life on one hushed word.

Hey Tim, remember when we "took drugs?"